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In every issue of the Christian Century you will find new thoughtfully and artfully crafted poems. These are accepted, curated, and edited by our brilliant poetry editor Jill Peláez Baumgaertner.

Now we are bringing these poems, with some bonus content, straight to your inbox with Poem for the Week. If you sign up now (click here) ([link removed]) , every Saturday (starting May 10) you will receive an email just like the one below. It will feature a new CC poem along with commentary from Jill and related poems to explore.
We hope you’ll join us for this weekly exploration of new poems!

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** Psalm 137 For Noah
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by Anya Silver

Come darling, sit by my side and weep,
I have no lyre, no melodious voice or chant.
I meditate on the Zion I could never grant you.
My son, my roe deer, my rock-rent stream.
My honeysuckle, my salt, my golden spear.
Forgive me your birth in this strange land.
I wanted your infant kisses, your fists clasped
Round my neck. I craved you, though you were born
In the wake of my illness, my dim prognosis.
I was selfish: I willed you this woe, this world.

In Psalm 137 the experience of exile after the Judahites were seized by the Babylonians was horrendous and led to extreme lament and the renunciation of lyre and song. This is where Anya Silver begins, as she addresses her son Noah, her “darling,” her “roe deer,” “her rock-rent stream,” her “honeysuckle … salt … [and] “golden spear.”

With the first line, however, we can see that Silver is writing about something personal, and this continues as she uses the endearments and refers to a child’s birth—a child deeply loved and yearned for. She wanted “your infant kisses, your fists clasped/Round my neck.” And then we learn the baby was born to the speaker when she was ill. She apologizes and calls herself “selfish” because the “dim prognosis” meant that the child would have a dying mother, maybe no mother at all.

The fact is that Silver was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer when she was pregnant with Noah. After fourteen years of treatment and its grim effects on her body, she died close to Noah’s fourteenth birthday ([link removed]) . During all of those years of suffering she wrote the most extraordinary poetry, some of which can be found in her books, Saint Agnostica, Second Bloom ([link removed]) , and I watched you disappear...

This is one of the most poignant poems I have read of all of her work, but there is more:


** Related CC Poems
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* “After the biopsy ([link removed]) ,” by Anya Silver
* “Coincidence ([link removed]) ,” by Anya Silver

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