"This timeless blood..."

This timeless blood was here before begat.

     Infinity runs in your veins—

        Not mine, nor yours,

             Nor Eve’s, not Adam’s—

                  Gat of God,

                       And spinning like taffy Godwards back again.

Sapped through the centuries to us—

     Grafting a limb there for the Jesse tree—

        Remultiplied infinitely,

             From heart to heart tick-pulsed,

                  Ill clad, ill fed, ill fit—

                       Here, child, do what you can with it.

"Mother's Blessing" by Eleanor Ross Taylor. Text from Poetry Foundation

Mother and Child, 1959. (Image uncredited at NARA, but possibly the work of Gerard Sekoto)