Stars freeze and burn
in their crucibles of thought,
each smouldering In Its own infernoa
brain on fire within a skull of ice.

As I open the door
the grate-fire spurts
subtly with the draught
and the tenderness
wells into your face
like a flash-flood.

Taut as a drumskin
the belly turns translucents,
howing its arborescing veins.
As I trace the capillaries
the child moves away
from this bank of your body.

The midwives bicker,
will the feet appear first,
protruding like antennae,
or the bulbous head?

The moment when the sluice gates open,
throwing him on the dark river of the stars,
will decide how his passions
eddy and swivel
and to which banks love will ferry him.
And already death has marked him
from his unseen boat,
as traversing the womb-walls
he is trapped into life.