‘Wilks’s pencil pictures, in constant dialogue with the poetry, mediate the dreaming inwardness of the cycle of gestation and birth with a visionary intimacy.’

Angel

Three times I woke and saw
with my eyes
watching over us, a presence
total: we were utterly known,
safe from all harm
on the twelfth night of your life.

I write for you this meeting
not to embellish your life
but to record
knowledge that is part of you now
yet must be relinquished
child, radiant
in the driftnet of my arms.

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Poems Copyright © Jeni Couzyn, 1983, 1985, 1999.
Drawings Copyright © Claire Weissman Wilks 1975, 1983, 1999. All rights reserved.
Legal notice: No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without written permission from the copyright owners and the publisher. Jeni Couzyn and Claire Weissman Wilks have asserted their rights under section 77 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.