Sharon Olds - May 1968 lyrics

The Dean of the University said the neighborhood people could not cross campus until the students gave up the buildings so we lay down in the street, we said The cops will enter this gate over our bodies. Spine-down on the cobbles-- hard bed, like a carton of eggs-- I saw the buildings of New York City from dirt level, they soared up and stopped, chopped off cleanly--beyond them the sky black and neither sour nor sweet, the night air over the island. The mounted police moved near us delicately. Flat out on our backs we sang, and then I began to count, 12, 13, 14, 15, I counted again, 15, 16, one month since the day on that deserted beach when we used nothing, 17, 18, my mouth fell open, my hair in the soil, if my period did not come tonight I was pregnant. I looked up at the sole of the cop's shoe, I looked up at the horse's belly, it's genitals--if they took me to Women's Detention and did the exam on me, jammed the unwashed speculum high inside me, the guard's three fingers--supine on Broadway, I looked up into the horse's tail like a dark filthed comet. All week, I had wanted to get arrested, long to give myself away. I lay in the tar, one brain in my head and another tiny brain at the base of my tail and I stared at the world, good-luck iron arc of the gelding's shoe, the cop's baton, the deep curve of the animal's belly, the buildings streaming up away from the earth. I knew I should get up and leave, stand up to muzzle level, to the height of the soft velvet nostrils and walk away, turn my back on my friends and danger, but I was a coward so I lay there looking up at the sky, black vault arched above us, I lay there gazing up at God, at his underbelly, till it turned deep blue and then silvery, colorless, Give me this one night, I said, and I'll give this child the rest of my life, the horses' heads drooping, dipping, until they slept in a dark circle around my body and my daughter.