On having a baby...

And losing your self...

I was just reading the Times, and there was an article that said, among other things,

Mr. Yevtushenko's lectures are scattershot combinations of recollection and observation, punctuated by readings of poems during which he prowls the room and, in the words of one student, "gets right in your face." At Monday's poetry class he warned his students of a great danger they may soon face.

"For many people the first diapers of their babies are the white flags that symbolize their surrender," he said. "Don't be like that. You can fight for all your principles and for your children too."

Which is interesting, and a subject much on my mind. I think Yevtushenko puts it well (even if he does sound a little heavy-handed) with his diaper/surrender metaphor.

You see, I want to have a baby. I really really really want to make a tiny Nora Rose. But I'm very aware that if I do this thing, make this baby, that I'll have to work even harder not to let my conscience become buried. Right now, I can see it, at the bottom of a pile of friends and desires and aesthetics. It's lying beneath poems and records and dog-walking and fucking casseroles and treadmills. It's buried under my life.

And the longer my life is, and the more full and wonderful my life becomes, the less regulalarly (and carefully) I check in with my conscience.

So I think it's a good warning, a good intention-alert, care-control. If you're going to be a parent... try not to fly into automatic pilot.

Like this:


The Pregnant

The pregnant
woman looks down,

traces herself
with swollen fingers, sighs:

“I can’t anymore—hide
the sponge that I am

from the baby
I’m becoming.”





Like that.