Kendel Hippolyte (1952)

 

Mamoyi

 

-Kendel Hippolyte (1952)

(for my son, Daniel)

The child is sleeping,

folded in among the brown boughs of my arms,

and a promise, formed beyond language, drawn upward

like sap through a pith, stirs through me.

In its slow course, i feel a vow so deep

it does not reach the flower and fade of word

but leaves me steeped, resined, in its truth.

Because i wish this child, awake, a man,

to know that he can keep, lifelong,

the trust, the self-astonishing joy that he has now

and he can draw from them the strength to make

his true path from the place i am

to where he will become, for his own child, a tree,

i vow: these boughs will never break.

From Night Vision. Copyright © 2005 by Kendel Hippolyte. 

#PeepalTreePress

-ER

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