If you were my daughter,
I’d put you out across my knee,
Like two lonely sea-sick lovers throwing
Glances in a spatial dance of four limbs,
And two opposable thumbs which eventually
Found the avenues of her dress,
Each button and hook,
And street lamps, and science:
Even put down for the recession of the latest
Franchise, these words are no good-
They don’t do the trick, they don’t know anybody.
Already, we have forgotten which way to turn,
What things are good- There are only so many words,
And most of them awful, and crippled,
Like cadavers nameless through their yellowing
Stacks,
Or at the other end decadently bourgeoisie, reserved
For the upper classmen who never think to smoke or
To cut class to purvey the lanky canal in the slip of
A silken canoe, to greet out of the way housewives
Sunbathing after doing the dishes down the fickle easement
Beside their pet otters. These things I have never seen,
But have heard of from the rain, or while skipping classes
And dream under the bus
In a heliotrope or darker slick. I will wake up now, and every
Thing will have changed, matured or gotten a profession.
Even my little sister is older than me; and the girl
I loved? It is like she was a daydream passing through
A sunbeam who has broken into new continents,
Bathed in reawakened seas, who doesn’t say hello,
Doesn’t even know that I have come out into the front
Yard after the storm where the kittens have drowned.
Now the neighbors are drinking beer and the rabbit is
Dead from the dog’s affections in the rock garden.
The kidnapper has already passed by,
And the Australian Pines are leaning against each other
As cripples. The sun is out again, innocently composing:
I am only four years old. The house is made out of old bricks
That will crumble,
And I will blame him because you are gone,
And I have nowhere else to go.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem