When I was a thin ten years old, world was not green,

Not good, yet seemed all a holiday, snowforts and summer.

Saturdays were long then. My brother's dog, called Bill,

When he was run over, broke both our hearts with absence.

I would have said the newspapers then made good reading,

Not like news now, the Jews driven, the peace no peace,

Murders civil and military, the dirtiness, the news.

My father must have known it. Evening after evening he sat

With the real world at his dinner. My father must have

Thought badly of Christmas trees, in nineteen sixteen.

My son is ten now, I am my father, the world not green,

Not good. But baseball is the world, only school clouds

His endless sky. There are birthdays and Christmas trees.

The difference is he has no brother who has no dog.

I feel evil everywhere, ruthless, more and more terrible.

The greater hates are further, the smaller nearer and worse.

I go to sleep despairing, and wake in the sunlight afraid.

Nothing is what it seems, little lasts, loving-kindness

Is an isolated curiosity.

Carrying my care to the table,

I sit down evening after evening with my son to his meal,

Telling him nothing. How may I? And now I have no father.

I make the holidays. I buy baseballs and Christmas trees.