260 Childhood poems

childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale and even though you remember your biographers never understand your father’s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy

FOR B. Somewhere ahead I see you watching something out your window, what I don’t know. You’re tall, not on your tiptoes, green, no longer yellow, no longer little, little one, but the changeless changing seasons are still with us. Summer’s back, so beautiful it always reeks of ending, and now its breeze is stirring in your room commanding the lawn, trying to wake you to say the day is wasting, but you’re north of childhood now and out of here, and I’ve gone south.

We opened the door to the fairy house & took our tea on matching pebble seats. Somehow we got out of there alive though something crystalline of us remains in that dark, growing its facets. We opened the door to the fairy house at the oak’s black ankle. You asked What could happen? as you disappeared somehow. We got out of there alive the strange tea still warm in our bellies. Inside, our hosts gave damn few answers. Who built that door? Is this a fairy house? They had no faces yet. We spoke into their quince-bud ears. You wept. Somehow we got out of there alive though we didn’t quite return. Our life is different now we’ve drunk the tea. They’re alive somehow. I got us out. Why did you open the door to the fairy house?

The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety. (Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up") There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day. The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong: The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng, The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday;— Thou Child of Joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy. Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all. Oh evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the Children are culling On every side, In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:— I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! —But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone; The Pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years' Darling of a pigmy size! See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learn{e}d art A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his "humorous stage" With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,— Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That Nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:— Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young Lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We in thought will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquished one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day Is lovely yet; The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

To Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, James Dickey Were you guys lucky, too, to caddy, the light on freshly-sprinkled fairway delicate and bright as eye of an Indiana owl or glitter of fish flickering in the Shedd Aquarium of the imagination, the tough but tender touch of leather socks covering the cobra- headed clubs, the crack of brassie on golf ball like whip of mule skinner filling all Death Valley; or to anoint oneself in grease and oil, sweating beneath the belly of a car or truck in the pit in Shimskis' Garage in Homewood; or to find felicity at Marshall Field's as a stockboy numb and dazed by rawboned, adolescent lust, stumbling about beneath a pyramid of boxes past models cooly on parade among the customers all day, filling immaculate brassieres with flesh like fortune cookies and in silken Oriental half-slips as I sweat like Sydney Greenstreet examining the statue of the Maltese Falcon in his hotel suite; and to fight, like a goddamn fool, in Navy alleys behind black-and-tan saloon in Minneapolis, my iron ring, its longhorns, slashing, can open up a cheek; and to sweat out a basketball game of one-on-one, the comments cryptic and intense as a fragment by Archilochos; and to pitch papers onto porches on a bike route as if your arm were Bobby Feller's blazing corncobs at a knot-hole in Des Moines; to cut the uncut hair of graves beneath an R. Crumb "Keep on Truckin'" sun large as a lemon drop, and to hawk cufflinks made by Swank as well as cashmere sweaters from the Shetland Isles, to scrub as if they had the London Plague of Robert Greene dying in a bed of straw in Cheapside Gran Canyons filled with dirty dishes in the Phi Gam kitchen in Bloomington, to tool around behind wheel of Checker taxi as if it were a chariot in a race in Babylon, to tote the 85¢ YWCA Blueplate Special to the widows of the ghosts of pioneers, to mix drink behind the bar as if concocting cocktails for Long John Silver and Blind Pew or Bathhouse John and wee, shrewd Hinky Dink, to create a 100 half-moons in a night by manipulating the control box in this elevator roomy as a shoebox purchased by Paul Powell here in a hotel with its 50 bags full of the fleas of Illinois— this great, unique chance to hear the language where it lives.

I love the sound of marbles scattered on the worn wooden floor, like children running away in a game of hide-and-seek. I love the sight of white marbles, blue marbles, green marbles, black, new marbles, old marbles, iridescent marbles, with glass-ribboned swirls, dancing round and round. I love the feel of marbles, cool, smooth, rolling freely in my palm, like smooth-sided stars that light up the worn world.

Dad didn't play the ponies or manic games at night; Mom was addicted only to her soaps. Sisters at war never swore. Silence was genius of an era, nothing personal. Our hidden grief shadowed the Fifties' sunshine like Eisenhower's speech against the military-industrial complex, like playground platoons still blowing up Japs. Thanksgiving comes late in this museum of childhood, flower painted at the bottom of a porcelain teacup: cracked saucer, no sugar, no milk.

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Let not the title of my verse offend, Nor let the pride contract her rigid brow; That helpless Innocence demands a friend, Virtue herself will cheerfully allow: And should my pencil prove too weak to paint, The ills attendant on the babe ere born; Whose parents swerved from virtue’s mild restraint, Forgive the attempt, nor treat the Muse with scorn. Yon rural farm, where Mirth was wont to dwell, Of Melancholy, now appears the seat; Solemn and silent as the hermit’s cell — Say what, my muse, has caused a change so great? This hapless morn, an infant first saw light, Whose innocence a better fate might claim, Than to be shunned as hateful to the sight, And banished soon as it receives a name. No joy attends its entrance into life, No smile upon its mother’s face appears, She cannot smile, alas! she is no wife; But vents the sorrow of her heart in tears. No father flies to clasp it to his breast, And bless the power that gave it to his arms; To see his form, in miniature expressed, Or trace, with ecstacy, its mother’s charms. Unhappy babe! thy father is thy foe! Oft shall he wish thee numbered with the dead; His crime entails on thee a load of woe, And sorrow heaps on thy devoted head. Torn from its breast, by shame or pride, No matter which — to hireling hands assigned; A parent’s tenderness, when thus denied, Can it be thought its nurse is overkind? Too many, like this infant may we see, Exposed, abandoned, helpless and forlorn; Till death, misfortune’s friend, has set them free, From a rude world, which gave them nought but scorn. Too many mothers — horrid to relate! Soon as their infants breathe the vital air, Deaf to their plaintive cries, their helpless state, Led on by shame, and driven by despair, Fell murderers to become — Here cease, my pen, And leave these wretched victims of despair; But oh! what punishments await the men, Who in such depths of misery plunge the fair.

The first thing I did against my will is see light. Older, in my mother’s belly with a good mind, I sometimes dreamed different kinds of darkness. I kicked, had sweet dreams and nightmares something like death, unborn happiness, blind hallucinations, memories I can’t name that still push me to act with unborn hands, all before breathing. What last thing will cross my mind after last rights and wrongs? They say the grand finale is like sleep, I may feel love’s nuts and bolts unscrewing — it’s best to be held tight. A pillow does not kiss. May I never waver in peaceful unmindfulness. I’ve seen passionate suffocation, I’ve felt exquisite pain. Far better doggerel: “Nurse, nurse, I’m getting worse!” Undone, I’d like my last thoughts to rhyme: I did not lend you my love. The end.