For many years I wanted a child <br />though I knew it would only illuminate life <br />for a time, like a star on a tree; I believed <br />that happiness would at last assert itself, <br />like a bird in a dirty cage, calling me, <br />ambassador of flesh, out of the rough <br />locked ward of sex. <br /> <br />Outstretched on my spool-bed, <br />I am like a groom, alternately seeking fusion <br />with another and resisting engulfment by it. <br />A son's love for his mother is like a river <br />dividing the continent to reach the sea: <br />I believed that once. When you died, Mother, <br />I was alone at last. And then you came back, <br />dismal and greedy like the sea, to reclaim me.<br /><br />Henri Cole<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/childlessness/
