Thursday 10 January 2008

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We're coming up to the Feast of the Epiphany, and to Orthodox Christmas, so I reproduce here a poem by Anne Stevenson, from her Poems 1955-2005 (Bloodaxe, 2005), with the Orthodox ikon of the Nativity.


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The scene they play
is the midwife's
without the midwife.

Blood, groans,
have drained into the gold,
and all her pain

is inward and to be.

The child
is like a prophet
on her knee.

A Doctor of Science.

In joy
his forehead
flexes in its sphere.

His hand
that claws her face
catches her tear.