In my middle age I'm finally thinking
about trying to have a baby, and my sweetheart
says, why don't we just buy a baby.
And I've never read this poem out loud.
It's just this little thing, really,
but I think I'll just read it, for the hell of it.
If anybody here was in Catholic school in the 50's
might get a kick out of it.
"Buying The Baby."
It's called "Buying The Baby."
In those days you could buy a pagan baby for $5,
the whole class saved up.
And when you bought it you could name
it Joseph, Mary, or Theresa, the class took a vote.
But on the day I brought in the $5
my grandmother had given me for my birthday something happened--
a fire drill?
An assassination?
And if it was announced, Marie Howe has, all by herself, bought
a baby in India and gets to name it,
it was overshadowed and forgotten.
And if I tried to picture my baby,
the CARE package carried to her hut
and placed before her, as her sisters and brothers watched,
that image dissolved in a long shining
hall to the girl's lavatory.
Even in my own room, waiting for Roy Orbison
to sing "Only The Lonely" so I could sleep,
I couldn't conjure that baby up.
The $5 I gave her I would never reach her.
I knew that: because I wanted my class
to think me good for giving it.
Spiritual Pride the nuns called it, a sin of intention,
which was a sister to the sin of omission,
which was the price for what you hadn't done but thought.
Sometimes I prayed so hard for God
to materialize at the foot of my bed It would start to happen;
then I would beg it to stop, and it would.
Weird, weird.