Florence Kiper Frank

From “For Barbara”

Aged three and a little over

SLEEP, the mother,

Has taken her over.

She has slipped from my arms

Into the arms of this other,

Who has touched her softly,

Who has flushed her with dreaming.

This is not the same

Sleep who gathers men

Heavy with labor,

Women drugged with pleasure.

This is the mother

Of little children only,

Moving as a wind

From white spaces,

Flushing their faces

With a soft flame, holily;

To whom the mothers of the earth

Give up their children

Joyously, with a clean gladness,

With only a little sadness,

Such as hurts mothers

For their mortality.

For they remember also,

Remembering swiftly,

Death too is a mother!

But now her lashes curl delicately,

The blue veins of her eyelids

Show sweetly in the soft skin,

Her red mouth droops slowly….

Hovering over

The child she is holding

Is Sleep, the white mother,

With arms enfolding!