Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.



Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor:



The tall girl with her weighed-down head. The paper-



seeming boy, with rat's eyes. The stunted, unlucky heir



Of twisted bones, reciting a father's gnarled disease,



His lesson, from his desk. At back of the dim class



One unnoted, sweet and young. His eyes live in a dream



Of squirrel's game, in tree room, other than this.







On sour cream walls, donations. Shakespeare's head,



Cloudless at dawn, civilized dome riding all cities.



Belled, flowery, Tyrolese valley. Open-handed map



Awarding the world its world. And yet, for these



Children, these windows, not this map, their world,



Where all their future's painted with a fog,



A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky



Far far from rivers, capes, and stars of words.







Surely, Shakespeare is wicked, the map a bad example.



With ships and sun and love tempting them to steal —



For lives that slyly turn in their cramped holes



From fog to endless night? On their slag heap, these children



Wear skins peeped through by bones and spectacles of steel



With mended glass, like bottle bits on stones.



All of their time and space are foggy slum.



So blot their maps with slums as big as doom.







Unless, governor, inspector, visitor,



This map becomes their window and these windows



That shut upon their lives like catacombs,



Break O break open till they break the town



And show the children to green fields, and make their world



Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues



Run naked into books the white and green leaves open



History theirs whose language is the sun.









