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A Baby Asleep After Pain

by D. H. Lawrence, 1916

  As a drenched, drowned bee
Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,
  So clings to me
My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears
  And laid against her cheek;
Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm
Swinging heavily to my movements as I walk.
  My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,
Like a burden she hangs on me.
  She has always seemed so light,
But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain
Even her floating hair sinks heavily,
  Reaching downwards;
As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee
  Are a heaviness, and a weariness.

Published in Amores
Tags: daughters, illness, parenting

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