caerula's Diaryland Diary

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the kingdom

Since I have no words today...

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies

Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives, of course
Die, whom one has never seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy,in a pink and green striped bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.

And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it's much too small, because she won't curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.

But you do not wake up a month later from then, two months,
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,- mothers and fathers don't die.

Read the entire poem

Shelter this candle from the wind.
Hold it steady. In its light
The cave wherein we wonder lost
Glitters with frosty stalactite,
Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus,
Sparkles with crystal moon and star,
Till a man would rather be lost than found:
We have forgotten where we are.

Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing
Down the cave from a secret door
Enters our only foe, the wind.
Hold it steady. Lest we stand,
Each in a sudden, separate dark,
The hot wax spattered upon your hand,
The smoking wick in my nostrils strong,
The inner eyelid red and green
Foar a moment yet with moons and roses,--
Then the unmitigated dark.

Alone, alone, in a terrible place,
In utter dark without a face,
With only the dripping of the water on the stone,
And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Now, go read about the Bear in the Big Blue House.

11:35 a.m. - September 11, 2002

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