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 Parturition 

By: Mina Loy  

I am the centre 

Of a circle of pain 

Exceeding it’s boundaries in every direction 

The business of the bland sun 

Has no affair with me 

In my congested cosmos of agony 

From which there is no escape 

On infinitely prolonged nerve vibrations 

Or in contraction 

To the pin-point nucleus of being 

Locate an irritation  without 

It is                           within 

                                 Within

It is without 

The sensitized area 

Is identical                with the extensity 

Of intension 

I am the false quantity 

In the harmony of physiological potentiality 

To which 

Gaining self-control 

I should be consonant 

In time 

Pain is no stronger than the resisting force 

Pain calls up in me 

The struggle is equal 

The open window is full of a voice 

A fashionable portrait-painter 

Running up-stairs to a woman’s apartment

Sings 

      “All the girls are tid’ly did’ly 

       All the girls are nice 

       Whether they wear their hair in curls

        Or-” 

At the back of the thoughts to which i permit crystallization 

The conception                        Brute 

Why? 

The irresponsibility of the male 

Leaves woman her superior Inferiority 

He is running up-stairs 

I am climbing a distorted mountain of agony 

Incidentally with the exhaustion of control 

I reach the summit 

And gradually subside into anticipation of 

Response 

Which never comes

For another mountain is growing up 

Which             goaded by the unavoidable 

I must traverse 

Traversing myself 

Something in the delirium of night-hours 

Confuses while intensifying sensibility 

Blurring spatial contours 

So aiding elusion of the circumscribed 

That the gurgling of a crucified wild beast 

Comes from so far away 

And the foam on the stretched muscles of a mouth 

I no part of myself 

There is no climax in sensibility 

When pain surpassing itself 

Becomes exotic 

And the ego succeeds in unifying the positive and negative 

poles of sensation 

Uniting the opposing and resisting forces 

In lascivious relaxation 

Relaxation

Negation of myself as a unit 

          Vacuum interlude 

I should have been emptied of life 

Giving life 

for consciousness in crises    races 

Through the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes 

Have I not 

Somewhere 

A dead white feathered mouth 

Laying eggs? 

A moment 

Being realization 

Can 

Vitalized by cosmic intuition 

Furnish an adequate apology 

For the objective 

Agglomeration of activities 

Of a life. 

LIFE 

A leap with nature 

Into the essence 

Of unpredicted Maternity 

Against my thigh 

Touch of infinitesimal motion 

Scarcely perceptible 

Undulation 

Warmth     moisture 

Stir of incipient life 

Precipitating into me 

The contents of the universe  

Mother I am 

Identical 

With infinite Maternity 

     Indivisible 

     Acutely 

     I am absorbed 

     Into 

The was-is-ever-shall-be 

Of cosmic reproductivity 

Rises from the subconscious 

Impression of a cat 

With blind kittens 

Among her legs 

Same undulating life-stir 

I am that cat 

Rises from the sub-conscious 

Impression of small animal carcass 

Covered with blue-bottles 

-Epicurean- 

And through the insects 

Waves that same undulation of living 

Death 

Life 

I am knowing 

All about 

     Unfolding 

The next morning 

Each woman-of-the-people 

Tip-toeing the red pile of the carpet 

Doing hushed service 

Each woman-of-the-people 

Wearing a halo 

A ludicrous little halo 

Of which she is sublimely   unaware 

I once heard in a church 

-Man and woman God made them- 

                                         Thank God.