Newborns

  Madonna col Bambino Incoronata da Angeli – Lorenzo Lotto

Nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu - Thomas Aquinas


Beneath adoring eyes we batten on

her tit, all appetite, with muzzy glaze,

our bowels and bladders loose – daughter or son,

enwrapped and washed in order to erase

the brine that, lately, painted us. It daubed

our mother and our father at our first

conceiving; they, like us, utmost absorbed

in desperate clutch of skin and warmth, their thirst

for love quite animal. But later those

attaching hungers will be dressed in frail

apparel, lent by Reason, to enclose

babes' flesh. Dressed equally in words which they’ll

speak; raiment with which we’re accoutred thus,

late adjunct, after the event of us. 





https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190048&sec_id=190048