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Birthday in the French Hospital, New York City
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83 Birthday in the French Hospital, NewYork City December 7th rushes back into my breath stories of Pearl Harbor’s crushed battleships, and of my sister beating her two year-old fists as my father puttied our walls with music. No photographs exist of baby Maurya, my parents being too poor to own a camera. We’d only a crate of California dates to eat, sent by my San Francisco grandparents. Paid for with a painting, I was a serious child. Too plain for frilly bonnets, and solemn as Miss Liberty’s torch, I decided early on to look for either wisdom or for grace. But where to find them? Snow, that winter, lay like a mother’s hand upon the brow of our city, while in far off Dublin town, an actress with my name surrendered her husband and sons to the hungry belly of an ocean, then shook her rags at God. I must confess, I’m searching now for light, and, in truth, I find it everywhere that darkness roosts: in the howl of the newborn, in her mother’s womb, and in the shadow of the rose as it lays its head against the thorn. ...