One summer post: Beautiful poem on being a woman

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As I opened my Facebook the other day, nothing, really nothing hinted that I would soon find the best poem on womanhood and fertility I read in my whole life.

The strange thing was that it was posted by a man – a British friend of ours who wrote several books and obviously has a talent to recognize the right words when he comes across them.

The poem was written by famous african american poet Lucille Clifton who received numerous prizes for her work, including the 2000 National Book Award.

Although the poem our friend John posted was an easy read, it immediately sticked with me. Since that day I have Lucille Clifton’s work opended in one of the windows on my mobile phone and suckle on its power for at least a few minutes every day.

Today, I have something special to share with you: “to my last period” and “poem to my uterus”.

Please take this post as a vacation greeting and a little rest from the science we normally discuss here.

 

TO MY LAST PERIOD (Lucille Clifton, 1936 – 2010)

well, girl, goodbye,

after thirty-eight years.

thirty-eight years and you

never arrived

splendid in your red dress

without trouble for me

somewhere, somehow.

 

now it is done,

and I feel just like

the grandmothers who,

after the hussy has gone,

sit holding her photograph

and sighing, wasn’t she

beautiful? wasn’t she beautiful?

 

POEM TO MY UTERUS(Lucille Clifton, 1936 – 2010)

you uterus

you have been patient

as a sock

while I have slippered into you

my dead and living children

now

they want to cut you out

stocking I will not need

where I am going

where am I going

old girl

without you

uterus

my bloody print

my estrogen kitchen

my black bag of desire

where can I go

barefoot

without you

where can you go

without me

 

Beautiful, right? I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Thank you for browsing around my blog.

See you soon,

Darja