Birth Poems
The Country Of Marriage
by Wendell Berry
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
......
Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
Fern Hill
by Dylan Thomas
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
......
The Pig
by Roald Dahl
In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
......
Circe
by Augusta Davies Webster
The sun drops luridly into the west;
darkness has raised her arms to draw him down
before the time, not waiting as of wont
till he has come to her behind the sea;
and the smooth waves grow sullen in the gloom
and wear their threatening purple; more and more
the plain of waters sways and seems to rise
convexly from its level of the shores;
and low dull thunder rolls along the beach:
there will be storm at last, storm, glorious storm.
......
A day in November
by Mario Odekerken
In the chill of November,
the world wrapped in a blanket of gray,
she feels the first stirrings,
a quiet promise beneath her heart.
The trees stand bare,
their branches reaching for the sky,
echoing the anticipation,
the breath of life waiting to unfold.
......
Antinatalist Poetry by Michael R. Burch
by Michael R. Burch
These are antinatalist poems and translations by Michael R. Burch. The antinatalist translations include poems and prose by Al-Ma'arri, Aristotle, Buddha, Homer, Omar Khayyam, Sappho, Seneca, the bible's King Solomon, and Sophocles.
Antinatalism is the belief that human beings should not procreate. Do we have the "right" to bring other human beings into a world that was always "red in tooth and claw" and is now increasingly deadly due to global warming, nuclear weapons, drone warfare and maniacal leaders like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Jong-un, Netanyahu and Trump?
There were antinatalist notes in Homer, around 3,000 years ago ...
HOMER
For the gods have decreed that unfortunate mortals must suffer, while they remain sorrowless. — Homer (circa 800 BC), Iliad 24.525-526, translation by Michael R. Burch
......
A Timeless Birth
by George Payne
A Timeless Birth
I believe that you
existed in me
before this womb, full
of silk fiber hair
and enrobed in fluids
of blood orange and
honey; there is an
unbreakable feel
......
Morning
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
The clouds have opened their eyes wide
And all blackness wiped off the face of
The earth.
Night’s curtain has been drawn.
The rising birds in one single squadron
Halloo the world,
Winging and swinging through the
Broad lanes of the ceruleans.
I wake and tremble with the coldness of
Netted fishes;
......
I heard your cry as you first breathed air
by Baramundi Roy
The moment that you were born I was there
and heard your cry as you first breathed air.
Thrilled by the sheer beauty of your small frame
we decided that Ruth would be your name.
Sweet memories indelibly remain
imprinted on my mind so clear and plain.
You looked so beautiful and so complete
wrapped up in a bundle so small and neat.
......
