Dorothy Barresi
Grendel’s Mother
Every mother is a monster.
If you don’t know that,
you don’t know anything about love.
And what did you think she would do—the great
mere-woman under heavy-booted oceans
when the deathcry of the boy she made
in her own body
reached her,
and she went marauding
along the wolf-slopes,
the dangerous fen-paths, because she could not
not kill somebody now?
A grieving mother is a walker in the wasteland.
Mindful of misery,
wilder than the sea.
In her arms, howling,
she cradles the ringbones and sprung gore
of her son’s severed arm
until it is Mercy
that cuts her throat,
as we knew, finally, it must be,
by some blonde prince
incidental to this story.
Her blood melts the prince’s sword:
that drowned lullaby
keeps us burning.
Ever good mother is terrible
and God loves a good story.
A woman must learn this
at her own risk.
There is a disturbance under the sea.