WHAT ARE MOTHERS FOR?

I don't remember where I found this,

but my mother used EVERY one of these.

My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside.. I just finished cleaning."

My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

My mother taught me LOGIC.
" Because I said so, that's why."

My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

My mother taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS .
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home."

My mother taught me about RECEIVING .
"You are going to get it when your father gets home!"

My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

My mother taught me about JUSTICE .
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you !"

MOTHER

     
by Herman de Coninck
Translated by Kurt Brown and Laure-Anne Bosselaar

What you do with time
is what a grandmother clock
does with it: strike twelve
and take its time doing it.
You’re the clock: time passes,
you remain. And wait.

Waiting is what happens to
a snow-covered garden,
a trunk under moss,
hope for better times
in the nineteenth century,
or words in a poem.

For poetry is about letting things
grow moldy together, like grapes
turning into wine, reality into preserves,
and hoarding words
in the cellar of yourself.


From: The Plural of Happiness: Selected Poems of Herman de Coninck, translated by Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Kurt Brown, Oberlin College Press, © 2006.

REMEMBERING

MOTHER
- Nancy Morejon, Cuba
(translated by Kathleen Weaver)

My mother had no patio garden
but rocky islands
floating in delicate corals
under the sun.
Her eyes mirrored no clear-edged branch
but countless garrottes.
What days, those days when she ran barefoot
over the whitewash of orphanages,
and didn't laugh
or even see the horizon.
She had no ivory-inlaid bedroom,
no drawing-room with wicker chairs,
and none of that hushed tropical stained-glass.
My mother had the handkerchief and the song
to cradle my body's deepest faith,
and hold her head high,
banished queen -
She gave us her hands, like precious stones,
before the cold remains of the enemy.