Sharon Olds - My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead lyrics

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Sharon Olds - My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead lyrics

I seem to have woken up in a pot-shed, on clay, on shards, the bright paths of slugs kiss-crossing my body. I don't know where to start, with this grime on me. I take the spider glue-net, plug of the dead, out of my mouth, let's see if where I have been I can do this. I love your feet. I love your knees, I love your our my legs, they are so long because they are yours and mine both. I love your—what can I call it, between your legs, we never named it, the glint and purity of its curls. I love your rear end, I changed you once, washed the detritus off your tiny bottom, with my finger rubbed the oil on you; when I touched your little an*s I crossed wires with God for a moment. I never hated your sh**—that was your mother. I love your navel, thistle seed fossil, even though it's her print on you. Of course I love your breasts—did you see me looking up from within your daughter's face, as she nursed? I love your bony shoulders and you know I love your hair, thick and live as earth. And I never hated your face, I hated its eruptions. You know what I love? I love your brain, its halves and silvery folds, like a woman's labia. I love in you even what comes from deep in your mother—your heart, that hard worker, and your womb, it is a heaven to me, I lie on its soft hills and gaze up at its rosy vault. I have been in a body without breath, I have been in the morgue, in fire, in the slagged chimney, in the air over the earth, and buried in the earth, and pulled down into the ocean—where I have been I understand this life, I am matter, your father, I made you, when I say now that I love you I mean look down at your hand, move it, that action is matter's love, for human love go elsewhere.