Poem of the Day
Study of Children
By Asha Futterman
did you know
that you all work for me?
I asked them as a joke
did you know
that you all work for me?
I asked them as a joke
His head and legs were like a watch work’s ticking,
but spaced by intervals of what seemed thought.
Off, on—there must be something else,
some middle way, third eye, or shakti current.
O light, unsayable in your splendor.
A lot of good you did to me.
We were inmates of an orphanage in Kraków;
A prison in Panama;
A school for the blind in Genoa.
Silence and ungridded space, from the tipped back glass
Of cross-hair sights angled through flensed white birch.
It made you less as well as more than human
always another moment
drawing back
I had been searching the hill for a vision.
And unabashed as if waiting he came into sight.
No, we cannot be the amorous ballet the tourist
requires for a backdrop—
In this respect the patriarch was almost certainly
mistaken