Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?—
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
The poem ends will the word “All” which stands alone. The speaker has put all of the pieces back together in order to created a whole; the speakers has allowed her children to live on through the act of remembering them. The title of the poem is “the mother” which can raise confusion since the speaker has no children that she is raising but by the end of the poem the reader recognizes that despite the abortion the speaker still identifies as a mother and remembers her aborted children as whole and real possibilities. Through the act of remembering the mother keeps her children alive.
The Mother