Thom Gunn
Baby Song
From the private ease of Mother's womb
I fall into the lighted room.
Why don't they simply put me back,
Where it is warm and wet and black?
But one thing follows on another.
Things were different inside Mother.
Padded and jolly I would ride
The perfect comfort of her inside.
They tick me in a rustling bed
–I lie there raging, small, and red.
I may sleep soon, I may forget,
But I won't forget that I regret.
A rain of blood poured round her womb,
But all time roars outside this room.
Thom Gunn, Collected Poems, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995.