THE BALLAD OF THE CHILDREN OF THE CZAR
31
The wheeling, whirling globe
Makes no will glad.
Turning in its clouded darkness,
It
is too big for their hands.
o
pitiless purposeless Thing,
Arbitrary and unspent,
Made for no play, for no children,
But chasing only itself.
The innocent are overtaken,
They are not innocent,
They are their father's fathers,
The past is inevitable.
6
Now, in another October
Of this tragic star,
I see my second year,
I eat my baked potato,
It is my buttered world,
But poked by my unlearned hand,
It falls from the highchair down,
And I begin to howl,
And I see the ball roll under
The iron gate which is locked.
Sister is screaming, brother is howling,
The ball has evaded their will.
Even a bouncing ball
Is uncontrollable,
And is under the garden wall.
I am overtaken by terror
Thinking of my father's fathers
And of my own will.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
