Talk of the Heart — Mothers' Fear

How afraid we mothers are!
For our growing children, how we fear
in the tumult of the mad storms,
if they go off to the city
we fear...
lest the winds shake their roots
and tear them up from its soft soil,
so that they are stripped from our safe bosoms
into the rugged unknown!

And in the night shut fast with fog,
for our children we fear:
its suspect, seductive airs,
its false and drugging perfumes —
what if they tickled their nostrils
and made wandering seem fair to them,
and they gave in, astray,
with their young, headlong instinct,
to an enchanted den
hung between the darkness and the light!

Woe to us mothers!
For our growing children, how we fear —
their roads are hedged with pitfalls,
and upon them steal, from the ditches and the refuse heaps,
the frothing, sleek serpents:
they befriend them — they coil about their necks —
they sow their throats with poison...
And the treacherous, ravening wolves
bear down harshly upon them,
tear their tender shoulders
and suck their hearts' blood...

Woe to us mothers!
In fear, forever, we live.
How shall our eyes settle into sleep?
How shall our hearts fill with content,
while our children are in danger —
the danger of the storms and the fog,
of the pitfalls and the serpents and the wolves?
Our whole life is dread
until the storm grows still,
and the sky clears,
and the day comes up —
then with our own hands we fill in the pitfalls,
and with our axes we crush the serpents' heads,
and we make an end of the wolves!