Yes, the child is coming …
My wife and I are full of awe, and not without fear …
It means a great imminent danger and agony for her,
And it means a complete change in our lives …

All of a March day we wait, and at twilight she is a stranger to me,
Cut off in some terrible universe of her own
Where I may not enter …
I only stand dumbly and pitiably at the edge, wrenched in spirit with the wrenching of her flesh …

And I am there late at night when the baby is born …
I see a human body emerging from a human body,
I see the eternal chain of existence,
I see, in the last physical blinding anguish a tortured girl
Emptied of a living being which had been growing in her,
And I hear this child wail, and see it breathe and move,
And see it in the mother's arms, peacefully sucking,
And her smile for me …
For she has come back to my world and includes me again
And asks forgiveness for the suffering she gave me …

And I am broken to shreds with a sort of pity for the universe,
And pity for us, and the mystery that strives through us,

The over-shadowing doom, our helpless coming and going,
And the dumb brute miracle of being …

I fall over the bed, sobbing my heart out,
Prostrate before the presence of the inexorable God.