Birth Moment ,The exotically named Adelaide Crapsey was a New York-born poet and English literature teacher whose short life was tragically cut short by tuberculosis. Her poetry output was fairly substantial but she will best be remembered by students of 19th and 20th century poets as the inventor of a writing technique called “the cinquain”.
This was probably born out of her love of the Japanese “tanka and haiku” forms of writing. It’s a kind of compressed style of writing that had many admirers including another famous writer, Ezra Pound.
Birth Moment by Adelaide Crapsey
Behold her,
Running through the waves
Eager to reach the land;
The water laps her,
Sun and wind are on her,
Healthy, brine-drenched and young,
Behold Desire new-born;-
Desire on first fulfillment’s radiant edge,
Love at miraculous moment of emergence,
This is she,
Who running,
Hastens, hastens to the land.
Look. . Look. .
Her blown gold hair and lucent eyes of youth,
Her body rose and ivory in the sun. .
Look,
How she hastens,
Running, running to the land.
Her hands are yearning and her feet are swift
To reach and hold
She knows not what
Yet knows that it is life;
Need urges her,
Self, uncomprehended but most deep divined,
Unwilled but all-comprelling, drives her on.
Life runs to life.
She who longs,
But hath not yet accepted or bestowed,
All virginal dear and bright,
Runs, runs to reach the land.
And she who runs shall be
married to blue of summer skies at noon,
companion to green fields,
held bride to subtle fragrance and of all sweet sound,
beloved of the stars,
and wanton priestess to the veering winds.
Oh breathless space between:
Womb-time just passed,
Dark-hidden, chaotic formative, unpersonal,
And individual life of fresh-created force
Not yet begun:
One moment more
Before desire shall meet desire
And new creation start.
Oh breathless space,
While she,
Just risen from the waves,
Runs, runs to reach the land.
(Ah, keenest personal moment
When mouth unkissed turns eager-slow and tremulous
Toward lover’s mouth,
That tremulous and eager-slow
Droops down to it:
But breathless space of breath or two
Lies in between
Before the mouth upturned and mouth down-drooped
Shall meet and make the kiss.)
Look. . Look. .
She runs. .
Love fresh-emerged,
Desire new-born. .
Blown on by wind,
And shone on by the sun,
She rises from the waves
And running,
Hasten, hastens to the land.
Belove’d and Belove’d and Belove’d,
Even so right
And beautiful and
Is my desire;
Even so longing-swift
I run to your receiving arms.
O Aphrodite!
O Aphrodite hear!
Hear my wrung cry flame upward poignant-glad…
This is my time for me.
I too am young;
I too am all of love!
