Many wombs opened before my coming; <br />In Catholic Normandy, flat Flanders, <br />The past turns in its coils, <br />Blood of my tribe, spent rubies in its eyes. <br />Dutch, French and Spanish, <br />Pounded into the gritty bread of Scots. <br /> <br />I was an old man's child, <br />Singer of songs, as all his village knew, <br />Who made the short walk to the grass <br />In a warm winter, <br />Grief and joy like sword-cuts on his brow. <br /> <br />One brother sleeps by the maple, <br />Another fills the bellies of Inca worms. <br /> <br />My mother, a withered gourd <br />Came late to the birth-bed; <br />Her christening present to me was a thorn. <br /> <br />Many wombs opened before my coming, <br />Quiet doors in the spirit house on the moor. <br />Grandmother's ghost is weaving a wooden cradle <br />So she may nurse my bones.<br /><br />sheena blackhall<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/homage-to-the-ancestors/
