Originally published in Breaking Open (1973)

1
For that you never acknowledged me, I acknowledge
the spring’s yellow detail, the every drop of rain,
the anonymous unacknowledged men and women.
The shine as it glitters in our child’s wild eyes,
one o’clock at night. This river, this city,
the years of the shadow on the delicate skin
of my hand, moving in time.
Disinherited, annulled, finally disacknowledged
and all of my own asking. I keep that wild dimension
of life and making and the spasm
upon my mouth as I say this word of acknowledge
to you forever. Ewig. Two o’clock at night.

2
While this my day and my people are a country not yet born
it has become an earth I can
acknowledge. I must. I know what the
discknowledgement does. Then I do take you,
but far under consciousness, knowing
that under under flows a river wanting
the other : to go open-handed in Asia,
to cleanse the tributaries and the air, to make for making,
to stop selling death and its trash, pour plastic down
men’s throats,
to let this child find, to let men and women find,
knowing the seeds in us all. They do say Find.
I cannot acknowledge it entire. But I will.
A beginning, this moment, perhaps, and you.

3
Death flowing down past me, past me, death
marvelous, filthy, gold,
in my spine in my sex upon my broken mouth
and the whole beautiful mouth of the child;
shedding power over me
death
if I acknowledge him.
Leading me
in my own body
at last in the dance.