Erica Jong - Poem for Molly's Fortieth Birthday lyrics

'Why do you have stripes in your forehead, Mama? Are you old?' Not old. But not so young that I cannot see the world contracting upon itself & the circle closing at the end. As the furrows in my brow deepen, I can see myself sinking back into that childhood street I walked along with my grandfather, thinking he was old at sixty-three since I was four, as you are four to my forty. Forty years to take the road out . . . Will another forty take me back? Back to the street I grew up on, back to my mother's breast. back to the second world war of a second child, back to the cradle endlessly rocking? I am young as you are Molly- yet with stripes in my brow; I earn my youth as you must earn your age. These stripes are decorations for my valor- forty years of marching to a war I could not declare, nor locate, yet have somehow won. Now, I begin to unwin, unravelling the sleeves of care that have stitched up this brow, unravelling the threads that have kept me scared, as I pranced over the world, seemingly fearless, working without a net, knowing if I fell it would only be into that same childhood street, where I dreaded to tread on the lines- not knowing the lines would someday tread on me. Molly, when you are forty, read this poem & tell me: have we won or lost the war?