To Cut Out and To Be Cut

Another in a series of poems I've been finding about kids and parents. It seems like so many of my friends, college acquaintances and other people my age are having children. Maybe all these interesting tidbits I'm finding are my lit-geek way of feeling the biological clock tick. Or maybe just having nieces and being around children more often has made me more sensitive to the intricacies of the endeavor of parenting.

For My Daughter

Antonella Anedda, trans. Sarah Arvio

I love her fierceness when she fights me,
shouting "Not fair!" Her eyes slitting
like shutters in cities by the sea.
Her life is rife with bonfires—seen and unseen—
fires that burn through the turning years
bringing her to life again, and again, in a miracle of smoke.
This heat gives her a sense of forgiveness—or so I imagine—
she kisses my back, capriciously, when I scold her.
Maybe she recalls the scalpel by which she was born.
Easy, the mark of its slash in my skin.
She rose from my belly as I slept. We're bound together
by peace, no shrieks of pain, and my modesty.
We're a canvas by Giovanni Bellini: a virgin and a sweet rabbit.

The painting alluded to in the poem's final line

I love the line "She rose from my belly as I slept." It's like a Biblical narrative or a fairy tale, both so specific yet leaving so much to the imagination. And we can't forget that a C-section is named after the ostensible first recipient of the procedure, an ancestor of Julius Caesar. How's that for some legendary allusion? 


Actually, after some cursory research, it seems more interesting than that: one possible etymology of the word "Caesar" is that it comes from the word "cut out." So the procedure isn't named for the ruler, the ruler gets his name from the procedure!