To Carry the Child
To carry the child into adult life Is good? I say it is not, To carry the child into adult life Is to be handicapped.
The child in adult life is defenceless And if he is grown-up, knows it, And the grown-up looks at the childish part And despises it.
The child, too, despises the clever grown-up, The man-of-the-world, the frozen, For the child has the tears alive on his cheeks And the man has none of them, As the child has colours, and the man sees no Colours or anything, Being easy only in things of the mind, The child is easy in feeling.
Easy in feeling, easily excessive And in excess, powerful; For instance, if you do not speak to the child He will make trouble.
You would say a man had the upper hand Of a child, if a child survive, But I say the child has fingers of strength To strangle the man alive.
Oh it is not happy, it is 'never happy To carry the child into adulthood, Let children lie down before full growth And die in their infanthood, And be guilty of no one's blood.
But oh the poor child, the poor child, what can he do?
Trapped in a grown-up carapace, But peer outside of his prison room With the eye of an anarchist? STEVIE SMITH
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