A fear forms I cannot name
Pulsing in waves of sine,
In gaunt rooms, in pallid light

And flatlines

In faith I drank as from a spring,

Yet a bane makes itself in me,
And thirsts for the very things
I despise


Though by no choice of mine,
I see through my mother's eyes.

I look to a newer world
With the sunrise


Where birthrights endow;
Not to burden and bear,
But bless and bestow,

And baptize as heirs

But I'd be received with sighs

As the bane of my mother's pride;
As a stranger inside her womb,
Yet outside.