"This street used to be too narrow for one car and a trolley-"

My voice comes like my father's, tiresome with news of local change.

To the two children with me, "I went to that school once,"

I said, "the Martha Perry Lowe," and four blocks further said,

I went to that school, too, the Highland," and in ten minutes

Pointed to the Hodgkins, the Cutler, the Rindge, the Western,

And one now a warehouse. My old schools didn't bore them.

They got to laughing, and laughed till they were almost sick.

What is a half-century of the glacier's grind, two wars,

And eleven schools, if a man's children do not know his life?

Where Crocker's Store was, the cabs rush supermarketers home.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Tell us some

more, papa.

That's the movie," I told them, "where Lincoln was shot one Saturday

While I watched Pearl White clutch a cliff with her fingernails.

Here, coming home from school by boat-the old Erie Canal

Went along this street then-I killed six Indians with my B-B gun.

Ozma of Oz showed me how to prove six minus six is zero Indians,

For which I received a gold star on my next arithmetic paper.

I use this for your closer contact," I told them. "Those are the

Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang," I said, pointing.

That's Brundage's, the cigar-store where I loaded a paper-cart

For my morning route. Montezuma and I worked it together.

I collected from the Irish, he from the old Aztec families."

Humor is a solvent for all terror, all panic, the immutables

Like death and disconnection, lost eyeglasses and no doorknobs,

Or, when the cold edge comes too close, humor is an insulation.

"Have I not seen the loveliest woman born, your mother," I said,

Out of the mouth of plenty's horn, waiting at that bus-stop

For me one rainy Halloween, when Paul Revere and I rode past

To Lexington, he and I, Santa Claus, and Robin Hood, on dinosaurs.

We came home for him to be on TV, and for me to be your father.

This is true, because here I am."

Papa, don't talk so crazy!

Please.