Wednesday February 8, 2023
Born Again
David Whyte
I want to be born again,
but I want to be born exactly
as I was, almost between things,
as I was in this life,
and as I want to be in the next:
Mary Teresa O’Sullivan,
nine months gone, carrying me
back to Yorkshire, her pains sharp
in Waterford,
sharper in Dublin,
the hard rolling bench of the ferry
almost my midwife.
I want to be born again,
in exactly the self-same life,
but fully aware this time,
from the inside out,
of my life to come
and to stand this time
as a beautiful un-worrying witness,
living beyond the need
for this or that;
looking with anticipation
to meeting everyone again,
the central memory always with me
of a ship making its way
through lifting water,
taking me on to a new life
the songs of the wind,
the songs of my mother,
my father’s disbelieving,
expectant face
at the ward-room window,
seeing me brought and held
to the light for the first time,
the sense of everything to come,
the sense of letting go
of everything I have held too tightly,
every single blessing, every accompanying
friend and every beckoning
horizon about to reappear again,
and always, always, the crowding,
merciful voice of the sea at my birth.
..
Adapted from
‘Born Again’
In PILGRIM
Poems by David Whyte
February 2023