Tiny bit of humanity, <br />Blessed with your mother’s face, <br />And cursed with your father’s mind. <br /> <br />I say cursed with your father’s mind, <br />Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back, <br />Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot, <br />And looking away, <br />Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond. <br />Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet? <br /> <br />Why don’t you kick and howl, <br />And make the neighbors talk about <br />“That damned baby next door,” <br />And make up your mind forthwith <br />To grow up and be a banker <br />Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter <br />Or—?—whatever you decide upon, <br />Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts <br />About being a poet. <br /> <br />For poets no longer are makers of songs, <br />Chanters of the gold and purple harvest, <br />Sayers of the glories of earth and sky, <br />Of the sweet pain of love <br />And the keen joy of living; <br />No longer dreamers of the essential dreams, <br />And interpreters of the eternal truth, <br />Through the eternal beauty. <br />Poets these days are unfortunate fellows. <br />Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way <br />Or new things in an old language, <br />They talk abracadabra <br />In an unknown tongue, <br />Each one fashioning for himself <br />A wordy world of shadow problems, <br />And as a self-imagined Atlas, <br />Struggling under it with puny legs and arms, <br />Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load. <br /> <br />My son, this is no time nor place for a poet; <br />Grow up and join the big, busy crowd <br />That scrambles for what it thinks it wants <br />Out of this old world which is—as it is— <br />And, probably, always will be. <br /> <br />Take the advice of a father who knows: <br />You cannot begin too young <br />Not to be a poet.<br /><br />James Weldon Johnson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poet-to-his-baby-son/
