To E. E. Cummings
I see the horses and the sad streets
Of my childhood in an agate eye
Roving, under the clean sheets,
Over a black hole in the sky.
The ill man becomes the child,
The evil man becomes the lover;
The natural man with evil roiled
Pulls down the sphereless sky for cover.
I see the gray heroes and the graves
Of my childhood in the nuclear eye-
Horizons spent in dun caves
Sucked down into the sinking sky.
The happy child becomes the man,
The elegant man becomes the mind,
The fathered gentleman who can
Perform quick feats of gentle kind.
I see the long field and the noon
Of my childhood in the carbolic eye,
Dissolving pupil of the moon
Seared from the raveled hole of the sky.
The nice ladies and gentlemen,
The teaser and the jelly-bean
Play cockalorum-and-the-hen,
When the cool afternoons pour green:
I see the father and the cooling cup
Of my childhood in the swallowing sky
Down, down, until down is up
And there is nothing in the eye,
Shut shutter of the mineral man
Who takes the fatherless dark to bed,
The acid sky to the brain-pan;
And calls the crows to peck his head.
