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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. 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, 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:
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