Before I wrote these words, before I knew how to write, before my late mother signed my name for the first time, to my father’s delight, before the Hurrian hymns or the cretic meter, before divorce scripts or gravestones or marriage seals, before tabulations or registries, before the first letters were formed, hastily, no doubt, and late at night, before a poet first felt the fevered lack of them, before a scar first marked a slave, a slave, before the first priest first lifted up a sacrifice with her praise, before names summoned either a face or a thing, before the mammoth-stalker’s first whispered warning, before my first father’s first call charmed his lovers in the morning, before the groan of grief, before the squeal of pleasure, before the first predictive gesture, before larynx or teeth, before breath and the bones of the hand, a word was there, just abiding, uncreated: a blessing, and not a curse. And I give it to you now, at last, like this.