Child at Five Days Old
- Child at Five Days Old
There is no sky so much as the first skythat's so oblivious of lesser blues—a breath so small, but hear in its downy crya fur that's drifting in a tuft among the dunes.
Your lashes make a minuscule sweepacross my breast, some mystic bird must singyour heavy newborn weariness to sleep.What unthought tones do your ears ring,
and do you know the world's enchanting you?Through freshly fallen snow, the path is new.But sides are caving in, in wake of plow;in place of snow it's left a darker streak—
and so I mark your bedtime story's page.Someday the ripened bud will fall to age,the crease of dark already on my brow,my too-near future warmed on your warm cheek.
Lest a nether time set in too soon:the longest path is lit by the newest moon. [End Page 99]
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei is associate professor of philosophy at Fordham University. Her books include The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature (Penn State University Press, 2007); Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language (Fordam University Press, 2004); and a collection of poetry, After the Palace Burns (Zoo Press, 2003), which won the Paris Review Prize. She studied at Oxford (DPhil, German literature; MSt, European literature), Columbia (MFA, poetry), and Villanova (PhD, MA, philosophy).
