260 Childhood poems

(With the usual.) I In winter I get up at night, And dress by an electric light. In summer, autumn, ay, and spring, I have to do the self-same thing. I have to go to bed and hear Pianos pounding in my ear, And hear the janitor cavort With garbage cans within the court. And does it not seem hard to you That I should have these things to do? Is it not hard for us Manhat- Tan children in a stuffy flat? II It is very nice to think The world is full of food and drink; But, oh, my father says to me They cost all of his salaree. III When I am grown to man’s estate I shall be very proud and great; E’en now I have no reverence, ’Cause I read comic supplements. IV New York is so full of a number of kids I’m sure pretty soon we shall be invalids. V A child should always say what’s true, And speak when he is spoken to; And then, when manhood’s age he strikes, He may be boorish as he likes.

On thin golden poles gliding up, sliding down, a kingdom of horses goes spinning around. Jumper, Brown Beauty, Dark Thunder, Sir Snow, a medley of ponies parade in a row. Settled in saddles, their riders hold on to reins of soft leather while circling along on chestnut or charcoal, on sleek Arctic white, on silver they gallop in place day and night. Such spinning is magic, (to dream as you sail) with lavender saddle and ebony tail, whirling to music in moonlight, spellbound, galloping, galloping, merrily go round.

1 The brightly-painted horse Had a boy’s face, And four small wheels Under his feet, Plus a long string To pull him by this way and that Across the floor, Should you care to. A string in-waiting That slipped away In many wiles From each and every try. 2 Knock and they’ll answer, Mother told me. So I climbed four flights of stairs And went in unannounced. And found a small wooden toy For the taking In the ensuing emptiness And the fading daylight That still gives me a shudder As if I held the key to mysteries in my hand. 3 Where’s the Lost and Found Department, And the quiet entry, The undeveloped film Of the few clear moments Of our blurred lives? Where’s the drop of blood And the teeny nail That pricked my finger As I bent down to touch the toy And caught its eye? 4 Evening light, Make me a Sunday Go-to meeting shadow For my toy. My dearest memories are Steep stair-wells In dusty buildings On dead-end streets, Where I talk to the walls And closed doors As if they understood me. 5 The wooden toy sitting pretty. No, quieter than that. Like the sound of eyebrows Raised by a villain In a silent movie. Psst, someone said behind my back.

My childhood was not an anxious place, though I lay in my bed, awake, thumbing my sheets like beads, wondering when the sun imploded would Russian astronauts be OK, they in their Sputniks, with their space dogs, they that chased their own tail around this water bowl we call Earth. When I was a child, in elementary school we practiced a type of protection called Duck and Cover, where we huddled under desks in case of a nuclear attack by the Russians. They were communists, had the bomb, and were evil Reagan told us from the small grave of a TV screen. In the sixties, Nixon said the same thing, and the Panthers countered with "the Viet Cong never called me nigger" With their picks like unclenched fists, with their afros like the plume of an atom bomb, they scared white and black folks alike. It is 2014, and America is still scared of the Russians and black people; now the American Dream is to be debt free, which I am not, nor may ever be, but at least I'm no longer afraid of the Russians.

One afternoon I said to mummy, “Who is this person in my tummy? “Who must be small and very thin “Or how could he have gotten in?” My mother said from where she sat, “It isn’t nice to talk like that.” “It’s true!” I cried. “I swear it, mummy! “There is a person in my tummy! “He talks to me at night in bed, “He’s always asking to be fed, “Throughout the day, he screams at me, “Demanding sugar buns for tea. “He tells me it is not a sin “To go and raid the biscuit tin. “I know quite well it’s awfully wrong “To guzzle food the whole day long, “But really I can’t help it, mummy, “Not with this person in my tummy.” “You horrid child!” my mother cried. “Admit it right away, you’ve lied!” “You’re simply trying to produce “A silly asinine excuse! “You are the greedy guzzling brat! “And that is why you’re always fat!” I tried once more, “Believe me, mummy, “There is a person in my tummy.” “I’ve had enough!” my mother said, “You’d better go at once to bed!” Just then, a nicely timed event Delivered me from punishment. Deep in my tummy something stirred, And then an awful noise was heard, A snorting grumbling grunting sound That made my tummy jump around. My darling mother nearly died, “My goodness, what was that?” she cried. At once the tummy voice came through, It shouted, “Hey there! Listen you! “I’m getting hungry! I want eats! “I want lots of chocs and sweets! “Get me half a pound of nuts! “Look snappy or I’ll twist your guts!” “That’s him!” I cried. “He’s in my tummy! “So now do you believe me, mummy?” But mummy answered nothing more, For she had fainted on the floor.

‘Mamma! mamma!’ two eaglets cried, ‘To let us fly you’ve never tried. We want to go outside and play; We’ll promise not to go away.’ The mother wisely shook her head: ‘No, no, my dears. Not yet,’ she said. ‘But, mother dear,’ they called again, ‘We want to see those things called men, And all the world so grand and gay, Papa described the other day. And – don’t you know? – he told you then About a little tiny wren, That flew about so brave and bold, When it was scarcely four weeks old?’ But still the mother shook her head; ‘No, no, my dears, not yet,’ she said. ‘Before you see the world below, Far bigger you will have to grow. There’s time enough to look for men; And as for wrens – a wren’s a wren. What if your freedom does come late? An eaglet can afford to wait.’

For John Skoyles My daughter made drawings with the pens you sent, line drawings that suggest the things they represent, different from any drawings she — at ten — had done, closer to real art, implying what the mind fills in. For her mother she made a flower fragile on its stem; for me, a lion, calm, contained, but not a handsome one. She drew a lion for me once before, on a get-well card, and wrote I must be brave even when it’s hard. Such love is healing — as you know, my friend, especially when it comes unbidden from our children despite the flaws they see so vividly in us. Who can love you as your child does? Your son so ill, the brutal chemo, his looming loss owning you now — yet you would be this generous to think of my child. With the pens you sent she has made I hope a healing instrument.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I saw a child set down her binder like a wall through the candy bin at the Corner Luncheonette so she could scoop out gum while she spoke to the clerk— and from that moment was in love:Oh theft. College was supposed to straighten me like a bent tree strangled by a wire, but being done with sweetness I could not resist the lure of meat. How the red muscle gleamed in its shiny wrap, a wedge that had once been the thigh or the loin of a slow brute’s body, sugar-dirt and clotted grass to be snatched in an instant and zipped into the crone-y-est of pocketbooks. Radiance housed in rawhide again, as when it was living. A steak can be stuck in your jeans when you’re skinny, a rump roast is right for a puffy down coat, small chops will fit under a thin peasant blouse where it falls off the breasts like a woodland rive with a limestone amphitheater underneath. Ancient city, ancient sublet, ancient wooden fire escape— with my other bandits I learned to say how-de-do in French. We were yanking on the cord that would start the motor of our lives though we did not have the choke adjusted yet. Sometimes it seemed I floated in the dregs like a tea bag bloating up with facts. Until a girl ran in the door, panting hard, face red, slab thudding from her snowflake-damasked waist onto the table, and we stood around it gawking at the way it seemed to breathe.

You squeezed its leash in your fist, It followed where you led: Tick, tock, tick, tock, Nodding its wooden head. Wagging a tail on a spring, Its wheels gearing lackety-clack, Dogging your heels the length of the house, Though you seldom glanced back. It didn’t mind being dragged When it toppled on its side Scraping its coat of primary colors: Love has no pride. But now that you run and climb And leap, it has no hope Of keeping up, so it sits, hunched At the end of its short rope And dreams of a rummage sale Where it’s snapped up for a song, And of somebody—somebody just like you— Stringing it along.