Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A poem with Halloween in it

Or Hallowe'en. Good evidence that it’s not always happy poets who make happy poems:

"I Am Cherry Alive," the Little Girl Sang

                    For Miss Kathleen Hanlon

"I am cherry alive," the little girl sang,
"Each morning I am something new:
I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited
As the boys who made the Hallowe'en bang:
I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:
When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,
Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:
I can be someone else whenever I think who,
And I want to be everything sometimes too:
And the peach has a pit and I know that too,
And I put it in along with everything
To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:
And I sing: It is true; It is untrue;
I know, I know, the true is untrue,
The peach has a pit, the pit has a peach:
And both may be wrong when I sing my song,
But I don't tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,
And I want them to laugh just like I do
Because they grew up and forgot what they knew
And they are sure I will forget it some day too.
They are wrong. They are wrong. When I sang my
     song, I knew, I knew!
I am red, I am gold, I am green, I am blue,
I will always be me, I will always be new!"

Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966), from Summer Knowledge: Selected Poems (NY: New Directions, 1967)

comments: 1

Anonymous said...

Oh, thank you. I had forgotten that one. It was like seeing my daughter at four years old all over again.