Birth of a Human Being

My snow soul is slowly taking shape,

Falling from heaven to inherit the earth

And the family features of God and ape,

Angel out of my element from birth…

And this is me, this helpless drop of Man,

This perfect mould of bud and mineral,

Crawling, flight, and every earthly thing.

All of it – nothing.

                                          Yet I’ll assert I AM

In time by striving upright endlessly;

Inherit here a kiss, to milk, like grist,

The love that made me, and by which I’m born;

The word that speaks its perfect mind, the fist

That grasps its imaged God; the whole torn

And bleeding womb of human history.

Note: 35 years ago today, in the Queen Elizabeth hospital King's Lynn, I witnessed my wife giving birth to our firstborn, still favourite (and only) child, Emma. Things started mid afternoon at a quiet and in my case traditionally bilious long school term post-Christmas get together with the neighbours at about 3 pm the day before and went on all night and all morning and just into the following afternoon. (I remember noticing that Norwich City won 2-1, wondering how such a remote event could register.) It was horrendous enough witnessing the birth. I am glad I never had to achieve the feat myself. But it was of course the ultimate labour of love and today, incredibly, our daughter is 35 years old. She has since extended the line by marrying our favourite son in law and giving birth at the same hospital (really nice Maternity unit btw) to two children herself, a daughter who will be four in February and a son who will be two in October.

35 years ago about now, I came home, wrung out by the experience, pranged the car reversing into the drive into a discarded dining room table I forgot we'd left there, and - exhausted, relieved, delirious - wrote , no, not this sonnet but a precursor of it called 'Animal'. A few days later, I picked my family up from QE and we started the greatest adventure, most important human activity and worst paid career of child rearing. Providentially it snowed almost as soon as I'd got them home and we were cocooned for a week, a much needed accidental paternity leave in the age before they gave you any. During that week in lieu, I wrote this sonnet.

Happy birthday Emma! XX