We don’t all get to be birthed

Yet dying is as sure for

Everyone as killing be to some.

Animals have no consciences

Sows will eat their piglets -

But for my mother being Catholic

And I of Irish extraction by caesarean

There is a good chance that I

Would never have been a poet

Because she told me later in life

That she wished I was never born

Et pour ça, peut-être mon fête de

Naissance n’était jamais célèbre.