| BIRTH RITE He whispers encouragement which she can hear only as part of the aggregate babble which pulses and swirls around the table where she lies, supine in sweat, gulping the air. She knows, nonetheless, that he is there waiting for her to need him, to ennoble his irrelevance by being unable to endure without him the difficult chore. And, if his need to be needed must be deferred, she recognizes, in its diffident timbre, its humble tone, a kind of oblation for this rite in which the world is decreed by the voice of desire intoned ex cathedra in the consummation of its consummation. |
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