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Michael Ferris
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
for the Reverend Mrs. Lovejoy
We hear the woe and wailing
almost every day:
the entrails of a plane wreck,
a twister’s hop-scotch prey
“included several children”
the breathless news crews say.
As if that were the kernel
of the catastrophe.
No pledge a politician’s
plaited tongue can take
won’t sound a bit more sacred
than “for our children’s sake.”
Those vows are tinker-toys,
such fun to rig and make;
how quickly we outgrow them—
how easily they break!
But I have read my Calvin,
my Shakespeare, my St. Paul—
and every bud has canker;
we’re wormy apples, all.
Observe a schoolyard playground,
the sticks and stones, the brawls:
the innocence of children—?
That’s so much folderol.
Freud dwells on children’s cruelty;
Kant spares no sapling guilt:
“From mankind’s crooked timber,
no straight thing can be built.”
We seek the soul of goodness
unadulterate and pure—
we find it in the children,
the kind we never were…
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
