In the morning our father
In his false white, false red,
Took out his teeth and fed them to his reindeer,
False reindeer, and gave us the presents his elves had made at
the Pole
And gave Mother the money he had made at the Pole–
And explained it all, excused it all
With a cough, the smallest of all small
Coughs; but it was no use, it was unexplainable,
Inexcusable. What is man
That Thou art mindful of
him?
A man is a means;
What, amputated, leaves a widow.
He was never able to make the elves real to Mother:
He was a shadow
And one evening went down with the sun.
I have followed in my father's light, faint footsteps
Down to some place under the sun, under the moon,
Lit by the light of the street-lamp far below.
Back far enough, down deep enough, one comes to the Mothers.
Just as, within the breast of Everyman,
Something keeps scolding in his mother's voice,
Just so, within each woman, an Old Woman
Rocks, rocks, impatient for her kingdom.
"I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me
And what can be the use of him I-but that isn't fair,
He is some
use,"
a woman in the twilight sings to me.
When the white nun handed to my white
Wife her poor red son-my poor red son–
Stunned, gasping, like the skin inside a ·blister,
Something shrank outside me;
I saw what I realized I must have seen
