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Sport 17: Spring 1996

On Hearing of Dominic's Birth

page 133

On Hearing of Dominic's Birth

A syrupy flow pushes out
from the blue-jade body of the sea,
a high gloss on the white beach,

and black seal surfies ride it
out and little Dominic rode it too
till his heart beat

a deadly, thin tattoo and they had
to slit the astonishing globe
of his mother's skin and pull him
through the wringer.

I am jubilant. I am distraught,
my memory tugging like a hawk
at the carcass of a sheep
the children found lying head-
long down a yellow paddock,

the rubbery ring of her vulva
shrunk tight and dried as hard
as metal round the little black
claw of her stuck lamb's hoof

and her head thrown back
as if to choke down all the air
that hangs flamy over the city.

page 134

I cannot separate them out,
these endings and beginnings;
my mother's face, laid down
on the floor by her own strength,

discreet as always in this
profoundly private act, her dying,
the blood stopped purple in her lips,
her cheeks, her chin,

her mouth wide open
in a cry which only just now
can I think of as victory.