I hope those two serve as some a preface or something like
that for the next poem I'm going to read,
which is one of the central spine poems of that book.
And is a pivot between those poems
in The Moving Target and the ones
that I'll read from after this book.
And it's one of the pivot poems in that book.
And again, it's a poem which is not like any of the others
that I read or any in fact that I've written before or since.
The explanation for this thing, I'm happy to say escapes me.
And I hope always will.
I mean, I hope it goes on escaping me.
But, the poem-- and the poem--
I mean, the reason I hope is also implicit in the poem.
And even in the title, which is that if the poem
is called 'The Child."
"Sometimes it is inconceivable that I should be the age I am.
Almost always, it is at a dry point in the afternoon.
I cannot remember what I am waiting for.
And in my astonishment, I can hear
the blood crawling over the planes hurrying on
to arrive before dark.
I try to remember my faults to make sure, one after the other,
but it is never a satisfactory.
The list is never complete.
At times, the night occurs to me so that I think
I have been struck from behind.
I remain perfectly still, feigning death,
listening for the assailant.
Perhaps, at last, I even sleep a little for later I have moved.
I open my eyes, the lantern fish have gone home in darkness.
On all sides, the silence is unharmed.
I remember, but I feel no bruise.
Then there are the stories.
And after a while, I think something else must connect
to them besides just this me.
I regard myself starting the search,
turning corners and remembered metropolis.
I passed skins withering in gardens that I see now
are not familiar.
And I have lost even the thread I thought I had.
If I could be consistent even in destitution,
the world would be revealed.
While I can, I try to repeat what I believe--
creatures, spirits, not this posture.
I do not believe in knowledge as we know it, but I forget.
This silence coming at intervals out of the shell of names,
it must be all one person really coming at different hours
for the same thing.
If I could learn the word for yes,
it could teach me questions.
I would see that it was itself every time,
and I would remember to say, take it up like a hand
and go with it.
This is at last yourself.
The child that will lead you."