I never did believe. No, honestly.
You talked, you laughed, but none of you were ever
Inside the talking or the laughing. No.
The sugar bowl, the glass of milk
Would never waver the way you would waver.
The apple lay. Sometimes it did me good
To hold tight to it, a hard ripe apple--
The big table, the coffee-cups that never moved.
They were good, they quieted the year.
And my toy did me good too, sometimes.
It was by me like the other things, as sure as they
Only not so peaceful.
It
stood, as though half way
Between me and my hat, in watchfulness forever.
There was a wooden horse, there was a rooster,
There was the doll without a leg.
I did so much for them.
I made the sky small when they looked at it
Since, almost from the start, I understood
How alone a wooden horse is. You can make one,
A wooden horse, one any size:
It gets painted, then you pull it,
And it's the real street it pounds down, then.
When you call it a horse, why isn't it a lie?
Because you feel that
you're
a horse, a little,
And grow all maney, shiny, grow four legs
(So as to grow, some day, into a man?).
But wasn't I wood a little, too,
For its sake, and grew hard and quiet
And looked out at it from an emptier face?
I almost think we traded places.
When I would see the brook I'd race
it
And the brook raced, too, and I would bound away.
Whenever I saw something that could ring, I rang,
And whenever something sang, I played for it.
I forced myself on everything,
And yet everything was satisfied without me
