Night Thoughts by Louise Glück

Night Thoughts

 

Long ago I was born.

There is no one alive anymore

who remembers me as a baby.

Was I a good baby? A

bad? Except in my head

that debate is now

silenced forever.

What constitutes

a bad baby, I wondered. Colic,

my mother said, which meant

it cried a lot.

What harm could there be

in that? How hard it was

to be alive, no wonder

they all died. And how small

I must have been, suspended

in my mother, being patted by her

approvingly.

What a shame I became

verbal, with no connection

to that memory. My mother’s love!

All too soon I emerged

my true self,

robust but sour,

like an alarm clock.