BIRTH Poem by Barbara Korun

How pain like a fruit unpeels from inside its own skin, warm
and gentle. How for the first time you feel the weight of the
body. Now you are no longer flying, now you are here. Being
here is your destiny, your first breath a scream as the earthly
breaks into the delicate incarnate soul. This is why children's
eyes are clear and glowing, why love joins what has never
been separated. It only seems that the flash of the blade is
what engendered yearning, began the measurement of time,
because now there can be no passing away, not ever. In this
tiny body everything is encompassed - a moment's flash and
now it grows and it is.

Now light, clear light has colour and hardness and heat. It
waits to be touched.