Sad Child Psalm, 1975

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept…
—Psalm 137

By the shores of my pink, stubby fingers I wept, by the
shores of my smeared sneakers and my hair, I was a child
weeping dirt and light, chewed buttons and bent barrettes, I was nowhere near

the water, the only water was the woods
that rolled back behind the redbrick house. The only shore
was my mother’s body and I wept there,

night-lip of the couch where her body birch-swayed, then slept,
her sorrow a shore of November
and bricks, her ashtray a shore of spent breath, I wept there

until I couldn’t, I wept where I could—
in the classroom with its lemon-Pledge desks and sun-
signs for in and out, its flat clockface that all day said

stop, that told lies about light and brooked
no wet fingers, no poplars and no unsafe skin,
no crumpled stomach full of apple juice and night—

I wept and remembered those Saturday woods
where the wet trees shook their milk down on my voice, my pink
ugliness, my motherless face weeping and dreaming its weep-mother

back awake into dimpled leaves and lies.
My name was a lie, One Who Laughs, my mother’s
a lie, Light, I wept for it, bluegray feather untouched beneath

the ash, I wept where I could, doll in the branch, headtuck and limpleaf I wept for God, I wished to stand at the waterline
between my child’s body and the body

of God, but God had no body, the woods
did not remember my mother’s body
and at home the cold candles wouldn’t whisper her hands

or if they did no one heard
over Cronkite, swingset, the sunset traffic of fathers. The poplars
never said Forget, the teacher said Don’t

Cry like she’d say Don’t Kick or Bite, said Sing but the trees
didn’t care if I cried, the alders listed and wet
the air with their bark harps, the maples

with their furtive breath. I wept along
the branches and the leaves, I wept
and learned longing

could keep me, the air between branches
could drip and keep the Absence, the fine air-mirror
of God, and when I see the child in a tree now

I say Let her weep, I say
into the furled bark of her brows Let her
keep weeping: if she sits

let her want to stand, if she weeps
let her want to burn
her way into the moss bed, but if she

knows the pluming of stars in her body as the rain comes
down let her weep, let the child
gone inside the tree weep all November down the leaves.