Looking into my daughter’s eyes I read
Beneath the innocence of morning flesh
Concealed, hintings of death she does not heed.
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The night's slow poison, tolerant and brand. Thanks for sharing it here.
The poem creates a very poignant atmosphere. But, the line of the poem is not easy to comprehend- 'I have no daughter. I desire none'. Daughters are treated like stars or divine gifts in most of the families. Thanks for sharing.
Hinting of death she does not heed! Thanks for sharing this poem with us.
The true terrifying breakthrough of this poem is that last line. It starts with a statement of looking into his daughter eyes and ends with a statement that no such daughter exists. In between is a litany of the horrors, the worst things that a father could foresee for loved and innocent child. In the end there is no daughter either because he has convinced himself of the immorality of bringing a life into a world where such suffering would lay in wait for the unexpecting girl, or his daughter is a corpse and her immoral choices in life have caused him to disavow her. Either way, the difficulty of understanding the final line is the same difficulty proposed by trying to reconcile the evils and immoralities in the body of the poem projected by a father upon his daughter. It is just unthinkable. Brilliantly executed.