I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, <br />I see my father strolling out <br />under the ochre sandstone arch, the <br />red tiles glinting like bent <br />plates of blood behind his head, I <br />see my mother with a few light books at her hip <br />standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks, <br />the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its <br />sword-tips aglow in the May air, <br />they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, <br />they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are <br />innocent, they would never hurt anybody. <br />I want to go up to them and say Stop, <br />don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman, <br />he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things <br />you cannot imagine you would ever do, <br />you are going to do bad things to children, <br />you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of, <br />you are going to want to die. I want to go <br />up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, <br />her hungry pretty face turning to me, <br />her pitiful beautiful untouched body, <br />his arrogant handsome face turning to me, <br />his pitiful beautiful untouched body, <br />but I don’t do it. I want to live. I <br />take them up like the male and female <br />paper dolls and bang them together <br />at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to <br />strike sparks from them, I say <br />Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-go-back-to-may-1937/
