Getting Born
Getting Born
Original Text
Carol Shields, Coming to Canada: Poems, ed.
Christopher Levenson (Ottawa: Carleton University Press,
1992): 3-4.
1Odd that no one knows how
2 it feels to be born,
3 whether it's one smooth whistling ride
4 down green, ether-muffled air
5 or whether the first breath burns
6 in the lungs with the redness of flames.
7My time and place are fixed:
8 at least -- Chicago 1935
9 in the "midst of the depression" -- as folks said
10 then. The hospital still stands,
11 a pyramid of red bricks
12 made clumsy by air shafts -- only now
13 there's a modern wing
14 smooth as an office tower
15The doctor is dead
16 not only dead but erased
17 "What was his name anyway? An Irish name,
18 wasn't it? -- began with an M."
19 There's something
20 careless about this forgetting
21 something dull and humiliating
22well, he died in the war
23 probably a young man with
24 smooth hands, a blank face
25 paved over
26 like a kind of cement
27The doctor is dead
28 Birth is an improvised procedure
29 Coming alive
30 just half a ceremony
31 composed of breath
32 a clutch at simple air --
33impossible
34 to do it well
35You slipped out like a lump of butter
36 my mother said
37 her voice
38 for once
39 choked with merriment
40 eyes rolled upward toward the ceiling,
41 round, white, young,
42 clear
43 oh shame
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2010
Rhyme
Form
Special Copyright
"Getting Born" © copyright the Estate of Carol Shields. Printed gratis,
and specifically for <i>Representative Poetry Online</i>,
with permission of her Estate. Any other use,
including reproduction for any purposes,
educational or otherwise, will require explicit
written permission from the Estate of Carol Shields.