In Malta, at the stone temples of new mothers,
they knocked the heads off ancient statues—mute mothers.
My mother denied her mother, sold her daughter
to a land without memory of true mothers.
After she died, he wore her silk nightgown to bed,
as if he could magic a double, two mothers.
In his long love poems to God, St. John of the Cross
tore off his cassock with naked cries—choose mothers!
Will forty years in the desert turn the children
into artists? Who will fill the dunes with new mothers?
Photo by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash
