Bever, Lillias

Cesarean

1. I.
2.  
3. There was an opera playing—
4. I remember that—
5. so beautiful, a modern piece sung by a woman
6. whose name I would never remember,
7. although the surgeon spoke it once, softly,
8. through his mask, and I strained to hear
9. past the clatter of implements on silver trays,
10. the bustle of the scrub nurses,
11. the murmurs of the anesthesiologist holding my head,
12. his tray of gauze strips fluttering like prayer rags—
13.  
14. II.
15.  
16. They’d pinned my arms down
17. like a butterfly’s wings;
18. I had no feeling from the waist down;
19. a dreaminess took hold:
20. and the woman’s voice kept wandering
21. in and out of the minutes, pulling
22. my mind after it, the notes
23. stretched so far the words had become
24. unintelligible—
25.  
26. The light was as bright as the sun
27. over an excavation site;
28. they were cleaning the area,
29. taking up their tools—
30.  
31. III.
32.  
33. Down and down through a slit
34. in the world, earth
35. falling away on both sides, past
36. history, botched experiments, sepsis,
37. Jacob the pig-gelder begging permission
38. to cut open his wife
39. in labor for three days; past
40. legend, Caesar cut whole
41. from his mother;
42. and deeper still, myth: Bacchus
43. slit from Zeus’ thigh,
44. Athena bursting fully-armed from his head,
45.  
46. as whatever is unmothered, torn
47. from its context, becomes
48. holy—
49.  
50. IV.
51.  
52. Jars, funeral urns, broken pieces
53. of pottery still glazed with their lovely enamels,
54. necklaces of lapis and ivory, gold
55. crowns encrusted with dirt, the mound
56.  
57. of the ancient city, and the mind,
58. sharp as the pig-gelder’s knife—
59.  
60. V.
61.  
62. There was something in me;
63. I’d felt it for such a long time,
64. and now they were digging to find it,
65. but not like the archaeologist finding
66. the glint of something precious
67. in the earth, no, not as gentle
68. as that freeing, with its brushes
69. and soft cloths, more like
70. a robin tugging at a worm
71. stuck fast in the earth,
72.  
73. pulling with all its weight—
74.  
75. VI.
76.  
77. On the plain, the tumulus
78. swollen with artifacts; in the distance
79. men bending and cutting, digging
80. then pausing to lean on their shovels
81. in the hot sun, sweat pouring down their backs;
82.  
83. from where I was, it did not look
84. like delicate work, more like
85. hard labor: burnt grass, a broken wall
86. or two, goats grazing
87. casually in the shade, and high up in the trees
88.  
89. that ceaseless singing—
90.  
91. VII.
92.  
93. At last they found what they were looking for.
94. I heard a voice ask,   What is it?   What is it?
95. They were cleaning something, holding it up to the light—