The Story Of The Mother

"Although my child has died," the mother said
"that doesn't make him permanently dead.
I must petition Death for his return."
She made her way into the lands below.
There was a rosebush there, where things don't grow.
It said, "You want your child? Give me your blood."
And on a thorn, her flesh was torn.
That's how rosebushes grow down there.
So then she met this great big centipede who wanted something from her.
It decreed: "You want to hold your child? Give me your arms."
In lands beneath, they grow strange teeth to tear your flesh more painfully.
But on she staggered and stumbled, for her baby's sake
and found herself beside a talking lake:
"You want to see your child? Give me your eyes."
Which turned to pearls and sank in swirls into liquid oblivion.
In the form of a spider, Death hung there beside her and kissed her
and made her his wife.