"More than being a human being"

Translations
by Michael Dickman

My mother was led into the world
by her teeth

Pulled
like a bull
into the
heather

She only ever wanted to be a mother her whole life and
nothing else, not even a human being!

One body turned into
another body

Pulled like that
by the golden voices of children

A bull
out of hell

Called out
her teeth out in front of her
her children

pulling


*


First I walk my mother out
into the field
by a leash
by a lifetime
then she walks me out
our coats
shimmering

I brush her hair

Wipe the flies away from her eyes

They are my eyes

Who will ride my mother
when we aren't around
anymore?

Her children won't

Turned from one thing into another until you are a bull
standing in a field

The field just beginning
to whistle us
home


*
Thank you,poet, Michael Dickman,so true to my heart these words, these days. I remember vividly the days I hoped I would become a mother and gratefully have and am. I wanted it so much like you said ,"more than being a human being". In fact, on my path, it has taught me to become a human being,"pulled like that by the golden voices of children". In the Yom Kippur sermon this year the rabbi spoke of a talmudic teaching, "that the universe is sustained by the breath of children in houses of learning that teach the ways of humanity".The breath and innocent play and wisdom of children is really what makes us human....