Dear Iphigenia
I know not what
A mother can say
To a daughter
Who was ripped from her
Before they’d barely begun
The long alliance usual to a mother and child
I must tell you
Far away in Zeus’ celestine
Where I hope you dwell among orange trees
What my life has been
I wish you to sense deep in your small belly
And warm in your valiant heart
My love for you
And my longing to touch your hair
All through this long-sorrowed way of sun’s dawns and downs
As I’ve dwelt in our household of stone
And wended lone on walks in the fields of goats and fowl
I have imagined your flying hair and scampering feet
And spun you stories in my head—
Accounts of happenings that have come to pass
Since that instant my arms could no longer hold you:
The story of the ewe
Who protected her lamb from the wolf
Spinning her body to his clacking jaws
As I longed to do for you at any threat
With all my limbs
From the instant you emerged from my womb
Another of the girl who dove from
A bluff higher than any boy had dared
And emerged from the dark-gleaming sea
Dripping and shouting her triumph with alacrity
As you once did
A third story of the girl I encountered among the oliviers
Who could read the clouds
But held her glistening knowledge and her hope
Like an amulet
Safe from the doubters and mockers
Within the bodice of her gown
Close against her still-flat chest—
It was your way of living too:
Small girl radiant with her own vision
…These stories amongst others
To let you know how your being still lights
And will never depart my heart, loins, or limbs
Ever with me is the aura of that former world
The pale yellow glint when the morning lamp
From the window settled on
Your cheek at day’s break
How it was the sea
Lapping and shining on a tiny cream-flower face
~
That yearning sadness is one portion of a mother’s truth
Here I give you another.
I reveal it despite my belly’s fear
This telling may cause you turmoil and ache
For the reason that Truth, to be itself and valuable
Demands to be all and to be whole
And since you are far from me—
And I know you have now seen
And found places for human things
Beyond those I could ever conceive—
I wish you to know your mother’s Whole:
For thirteen years
Repressed rampage has been my lot
The grief at not being able to behold your face
Each minute and all these scraping years
Is a howling storm raging up sea boulders
A towering, green-smashing ricocheting torrent.
The rage of the Furies that burst
To course through all the vessels of my body
Upon the instant you were torn from me
Could split rock…
As I feign and fight for calm
As well as celebrate and cradle you
In the citadel of
Our sacred green-golden meadowed homeland.
- Sara Mansfield Taber is author of the award-winning memoir Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy’s Daughter. She has also published Black Water and Tulips: My Mother, The Spy’s Wife, two books of literary journalism, and the writing guides To Write the Past: A Memoir Writer’s Companion and Chance Particulars: A Writer’s Field Notebook. Her many essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as The American Scholar and The Washington Post. A practicing social worker and psychologist with a specialty in cross-cultural human development, she has coached writers and taught writing workshops at universities and writing programs for the past three decades. For the last five years, she has been facilitating “Writing for Resilience” workshops for a wide variety of highly stressed communities around the world. Sara’s last work is the epic Greek poem “The Women of the Oresteia” under review for publication. Sara passed away in February of this year.
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