For Rebecca, born at Midwinter

For Rebecca, born at Midwinter

For Rebecca, born at Midwinter

Cockcrow at midwinter dark, air moving,
and then a slow
incantation from each tree,
as when the light comes slowly, crossing
centuries of dark on dark moving, slowly
the candour of the sun, as water
almost pauses for the brim, waiting
one slow moment, then goes beyond
a hesitation not its own,
steeping a new element,
so the light, so the fire
on water, earth and air: slow
the genesis.

Into each trick
of your head,
deft heiress, into
each cry
or reaching out
your fingers make,
each glance that blurs
about our awe,
come the centuries:
the spirit and mortality,
the virtue of our kind,
come random through
the strict inheritance,
the wide
deep ending of our past.

I watch you now and watch
how once a saint bent with your knee,
ghost-cosseted: and I may feel
the mad or innocent
throbbing in your pulse
or think that one who paints
an orange beast upon a rock
lingers in your smile. Newly-born,
here are those they hanged
and those who brought the harvest in:
the men at battle, grinning,
who learned the dialect of death,
who now lie buried, blank,
beneath the peat or bush.

It was for you the women died,
who, starved, and sick with hate,
have you for triumph now, you
once more their birth. Here
is ghostly policy and rage,
the labour and the knowledge.
O small thing, made, that lies
within your mother's arms,
you are the coming from, and all
that is to be.

Small and yet
a thing that bubbles
in itself, considering
itself: is godly
in its way, its
knowledge of the path
to take, the openings
of fate: and it will lose
that blest
and vague
perfection,
that impotent serenity,
will, in itself
and as itself, choose
just what to know,
at what
expense,
will find
the posture fit
for day and night,
a fresh dexterity
of hand and heart, new
reachings of the will, within,
without.

This shortest day in which
we saw you first
will send its light and shadow
through long seasons
of your own. Sleep now,
granddaughter, sleep
in the sanctity of birth:
you hold within your fist
the blessing and the curse,

all growing and all blight.
Hold your testament,
hold it as you must
within a fist
as blind and potent as a nut,
hold us,
all those whom Adam
or the older gods begat.