妈妈的祈祷--雅典娜.吉尔德加德

我站在我们架空住房的门廊上
       看见我两个红润健康的孩子
伏身看下面草丛里
         一只背部坚硬的甲壳虫
我生了恐惧症
     怕那个东西 爬上来爬上来跟着我
突然我看见自己跌下去，
       我的身体在石板铺的地面上扭动，
一条光着的大腿擦伤了，血淋淋，
      我的两个孩子，吓得呆若木鸡，
 俯身靠近我
          轻轻喊着，“妈妈，妈妈。”

当时我就知道，正如一个人开始意识到
      事情本身就留置在我们的记忆里，
我没有办法告诉他们，
      我的孩子们，有一天我会
如何如灰烬一样离开他们
       他们会在流水上颠簸，
他们感觉到被抛弃了会如何
      即使梦那种方式也不能表达。
上帝，在我内心里为此腾出空间吧。
I stood on the porch of our raised cottage
          and saw my two ruddy children
crouched below in the grass
          over a hard-backed beetle
and I was taken with this phobia
          that goes up and up with me
and suddenly I saw myself fallen,
          my body twisted on the pavement,
a thigh bare and scraped and bloody,
          and my two children, wooden
with fear, bent over me
          saying softly, “Mama, mama.”

And I knew then, as one comes to know
          things that lodge themselves in us,
that I had no way of telling them,
          my children, how I would
leave them some day as ashes
          they will toss out over moving water,
how they will feel abandoned
          in ways that even dreams cannot express.
Lord, make room inside me for this.

“Mother's Prayer” by Athena Kildegaard from Bodies of Light. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2011.