Preconception

By Ben Jonson

I have no children:

But tonight a poem came

in which a small child,

my daughter, appeared at the door

of a half-lit room

where late one night I wrote

at a heavy desk.

And though interruption

was hardly welcome

I took her to myself,

just as the poem,

comforted this daughter

until she found peace.

The poems as the children

come as they will come.