She Walks in Beauty_ A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy [35]
Roses Only
MARIANNE MOORE
You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than
an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are
justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff
and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking
for everything
self-dependent, anything an
ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to attempt
through sheer
reserve to confute presumptions resulting from observation is
idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant,
it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-
eminence. You would look, minus
thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere
peculiarity. They are not proof against a storm, the elements, or
mildew
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without
coordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be
remembered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you.
Eagle Poem
JOY HARJO
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadly growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
MOTHERHOOD
MY CHILDREN ARE too wonderful and too old for me to write about them without getting into trouble. But I can certainly say, like everyone does, that becoming a mother is the best thing that ever happened to me. Having a child defines us for the rest of our lives. No matter what else we do, we will always be that person’s mother. We give our children the gift of ourselves, and they give us so much more in return—especially when they are teenagers! Each mother-child relationship teaches us our limitations and our strengths. It changes us in constantly unfolding ways and entwines us in the unpredictable mystery of another life.
The poems in this section start and end with a blessing. They begin with “A Cradle Song” by W. B. Yeats, a lullaby of wonder from a parent to a newborn child. The last poem is Lucille Clifton’s “blessing the boats,” in which she wishes safe passage for a child whose mother’s arms can no longer protect her from the world.
In motherhood, like poetry, the particular becomes universal. Each detail evokes an entire world of memories. In “Socks,” Sharon Olds describes the feeling of being needed as she lifts her lazy son’s leg to put on his sock, and every mother can feel the dead weight of that heavy leg with her own muscle memory.
There are also poems about mothers from the child’s point of view. In “Clearances,” the special closeness Seamus Heaney felt when he and his mother peeled potatoes together reminds us that sharing the mundane duties of daily life builds a lifetime of love between parent and child.
The old-fashioned poem “Somebody’s Mother” by Mary Dow Brine, shares an important theme with Elizabeth Alexander’s modern works “The Dream That I Told My Mother-in-Law” and “Ode.” One of the great gifts of motherhood is the ability to see other people’s children as our own, and to feel that the responsibility of caring for them is ours.
My aunt Eunice, who founded the Special Olympics, used to quote Henry Ward Beecher, who wrote, “A mother’s heart is a child’s schoolroom.” Our mothers are our first teachers, and we teach others the same lessons we learn from them. As a child, when your mother believes