For Baby Thérèse and Great-Grandpa Mendel
Death-Thresholded old man hold
Upon your uncertain lap—here, hold!
Upon your near-centuried lap, your golden child.
Death’s intervening face affronts my gaze.
This is no place for your reproachful aches.
Too late! it scarcely seems worth the journey’s weight
To bring the child’s gaiety for your poor sight.
You wear death in place of the features we knew,
Dim old man, dear grandpa, homeless and confined
I grieve years long with an enduring grief
For you, earth-ridden, wandering and shackled, in the hospital
Of an old-age home. This is no place for an old man.
That she may look upon the earth
I cast her on, and weep for all the shipwrecks,
All the castaways—view the hollow
Of unalterable loneliness
Before her infant mind can penetrate its mysteries,
To inoculate her spirit against the dreadful vagaries
Of busy man, I bring her here,
And for your benedictine touch, your glance, your winging wishes
Where there is no place for an old man there is no place for anyone.
But there! she moves upon your lap
As though the great wheel on which we all ride
Stirred her, as though wheels, worlds, the moving years
O centuries, leaned upon her tiny thoughtful form
As she sits, gazing out from the bright rim
Of all the heavens upon the shell of night.
_____________