3
30
PARTISAN REVIEW
I am my father's father,
You are your children's guilt,
In history's pity and terror
The child is Aeneas again,
Troy is in the nursery,
The rocking horse is on fire,
Child labor! the child must carry
His fathers on his back!
.
But seeing that so much is past,
And that history has no ruth
For the individual
Who drinks tea, who catches cold,
Let anger be general:
I hate an abstract thing.
4
Brother and sister bounced.
The bounding, unbroken ball,
The shattering sun fell down
Like swords upon their play,
/ Moving eastward among the stars
Toward February and October.
But the May wind brushed their cheeks
Like a mother watching sleep,
And if for a moment they fight
Over the bouncing ball,
And sister pinches brother,
And brother kicks her shins,
Well! the heart of man is known:
It is a cactus bloom.
5
The ground on which the ball bounces
Is another bouncing ball,
