Looking back in my mind I can see <br />The white sun like a tin plate <br />Over the wooden turning of the weeds; <br />The street jerking --a wet swing-- <br />To end by the wall the children sang. <br /> <br />The thin grass by the girls' door, <br />Trodden on, straggling, yellow and rotten, <br />And the gaunt field with its one tied cow-- <br />The dead land waking sadly to my life-- <br />Stir, and curl deeper in the eyes of time. <br /> <br />The rotting pumpkin under the stairs <br />Bundled with switches and the cold ashes <br />Still holds for me, in its unwavering eyes, <br />The stinking shapes of cranes and witches, <br />Their path slanting down the pumpkin's sky. <br /> <br />Its stars beckon through the frost like cottages <br />(Homes of the Bear, the Hunter--of that absent star, <br />The dark where the flushed child struggles into sleep) <br />Till, leaning a lifetime to the comforter, <br />I float above the small limbs like their dream: <br /> <br />I, I, the future that mends everything.<br /><br />Randall Jarrell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-elementary-scene/
