For the Children of Poets #poem by G.E. Schwartz

 

John Milton and his two daughters, one of whom,
Deborah, I believe, is not looking thrilled with time spent taking dictation,
even if her learned father is dictating Paradise Lost. Artist: George Romney, 1794.

For the Children of Poets

Children of poets, how do you find Your haven? Maybe you escape to

     A cousin’s or some other place? If There are two homes, off and on,

Separately (the parents’), would you Be directed by where you have little

     But private stress to cope with? (With Her mother away, Deborah Milton

Had to be used, by ear and by pen Especially, at her alternate home.

     Imagine, in the dark deeps of night, The blind poet, her father, haplessly

Rounding with a surge of line upon Line till he could bear no burdening

     Anymore, and at four-thirty a. m., The hired secretary ill, unavailable!)

You heard, and wrote: a process by-Passing mind, or heart, I’d guess. Did

     Sister Mary, too, have to learn Hebrew, Latin, other languages, he wanted

Read aloud? Children of dust, the call Can come at harsh hours, disrupting

     The sleep of nature. The voice must Be heeded, the unfathomable words

Forming at best a promise that, in Some way, someday, everything will

     Come into clarity. Warm-hearted Samuel Johnson must have been so

Exasperated on your behalf, saying That you had ben schooled only in

     Alphabets and sounds of all those Languages, not in the words, their

Meanings that might have made all The long hours a little less wearisome.

     Children, sleep well while all time Runs on. Rise, docile, dim of spirit.

Someday someone sometime will bless you for it.

_ _ _

G.E. Schwartz. "For the Children of Poets" first appeared in Dappled Things, and is included in G.E. Schwartz' collection Murmurations (Foothills Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-951053-32-4; www.foothillspublishing.com).