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2 Mar 2022
Gwenno
Gwilym
New
Moon
Mar 18th
The baby will
not let you
Feb 16th
After Gil Scott-Heron’s
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The baby will not let you, mother
Will not let you recover, rest or heal
This is real
The baby will not latch on, mother
Even though you’re really trying
and crying
Everyone is crying
Your baby will consume you, mother
There will be no late-night dancing
early morning lie-ins
There will be no duvet days, off days
annual leave or sick pay
The baby will not let you, mother
The baby will not give you instant fulfilment
The baby will not give you a higher purpose
The baby will not give you a happy family
The baby will not give any of those things
There will be no pictures of you
chasing contentment
No pictures of you and him
burning with resentment
There will be no pictures of the late night Googling
panic attacks, obsessive temperature-checking
antibiotics for mastitis
There will be no pictures, mother
The baby will make you question yourself
your sanity, humanity, your own mother
The baby will not care about your identity,
your entity, your spontaneity, your history
The baby will not care about your relevance
your irrelevance, your elegance, arrogance
your recklessness, fecklessness, fucked-up-ness
The baby will not thank you, praise you or judge you
The baby will only care about your touch
The baby will be too much, mother
The baby will not let you
will not let you
will not let you
SLEEP
The baby will be awake
Behind the poem...
This poem was written after a particularly draining night feeding my baby and listening to spoken word on Spotify through headphones – not moving, almost not breathing, lest the baby woke up. For this reason, it's meant to be read in an increasingly frustrated voice; its template taken from Gil Scott-Heron's lyric, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I hope it resonates with all those who’ve lost hours of their lives trying to get a baby to sleep.
