Words For My Daughter

I first heard Words for my Daughter by Janet Paisley at a reading on National Poetry Day 1995. I had my nine-day-old daughter with me and it made a profound impression. Shortly afterwards I wrote the flute and piano piece, which is in effect a free setting of the poem.   It was commissioned by Young Concert Artsts Trust (YCAT) for Catherine Beynon and Elizabeth Burley.     

Words for my Daughter

Come, the cap of birth is dry,   

my labouring is done, your cry   

has split the world's roof.     

Be comforted, the womb   

returns to wrap around you.

Sweet darkness, velvet-blood 

from which you came,    

as night will cup you again, again     

move you outward into light;   

a brilliance to be danced in     

is life. Your staggering steps   

will grow to trust this earth;   

it meets both sure and unsure feet.     

That shifting pain will shape   

the edges that define you.     

Move through yourself. See,   

the fugure is with child   

 

and needs your labouring.   

Be done with pasts, walk away.

I'll watch, I'll guard your back,     

blinded by my own time. Go forward   

from the shadows mothers cast

As old women shrink, rich fruit   

seed into the garden   

I have been. Now you. So live,

we have both shed our tears   

for miracles, for coming new.

In birth-sleep heavy at my breast,   

love-child, first comes the dream   

and then the making true.

Janet Paisley   

Reproduced with permission of Chapman Publishing.