At 13
Ramsey, Helen, Doretta, Robert—
Such is my family …
Mother and my eldest sister Elsa are down in New York:
But I have taken the four younger children up to a back-country farm at Coxsackie …
And I am a little over thirteen …
The simple old reddish farm-house is set, porchless, in grass,—meadow and orchard …
It is simple and unspoiled pastoral country, dreaming with peace …
One hears no sound on a warm day save bees humming, leaves stirring, grasses waving,
A cow's moo, a chick's cluck, a woman's voice …
We city children run loose … plays and dreams …
Twice of hot days we bathe and splash in the mud-bottomed creek …
At sunset we sit at the farm-house doorway on the grass: the farmer smokes his pipe:
We see the earth dreaming of the loves of Spring,
And the sky troubled with other worlds …
But in these days it is darkness we love …
We have two adjoining rooms: the three boys in the big one, the two girls in the little one …
The girls have an old-fashioned bed, and the five of us in the hot night and in our nightgowns
Stretch side by side, I in the center …
And I tell stories … strange, long, endless stories of magic …
I am in love with my youngest sister: the stories are about her and me …
I am in love with her, and I wonder, locked in with her of a breathless afternoon
Why I feel guilty and flushed, hugging her and kissing her,
And why, later, my mother forbids it,
And why, sent then to take French lessons of a yellow-haired girl in the village,
I fall madly in love with my teacher …
But mother is far away: and I am the mother and father of these children …
For once, I am happy … I am nested among my little lovers …
And I am full of dawn … the sunrise of sex is turning my childish world into startling and divine beauty …
I am suddenly aware of a magic cry in the blood and a panting of the spirit …
I am thrilled with the colours and forms of the earth, cloud-puffs, apple-blows, bird-notes …
O what a dawn! Coming up in the river-boat, at five in the morning, I went up to the prow,
And there lay smooth clear waters of the Hudson in cool shadows of dark mountains,
And dawn was reverential and grey with awe …
As I stood, the child fell away from me, I had the first of my new births …
I knew now that to be human meant something full of dream and fire,
And that male and female struck mad music from each other …
So, lying in the orchard, under floating clouds, and clouds of blossoms,
And full of honeysuckle perfume and sounds of bees,
A first vivid passion wrought ecstasy in me,
And poetry was born … I had to sing strange things on paper …
My purpose and my life-work came to me . . . .
So this happy interlude between a dark childhood and a darker youth …
Such is my family …
Mother and my eldest sister Elsa are down in New York:
But I have taken the four younger children up to a back-country farm at Coxsackie …
And I am a little over thirteen …
The simple old reddish farm-house is set, porchless, in grass,—meadow and orchard …
It is simple and unspoiled pastoral country, dreaming with peace …
One hears no sound on a warm day save bees humming, leaves stirring, grasses waving,
A cow's moo, a chick's cluck, a woman's voice …
We city children run loose … plays and dreams …
Twice of hot days we bathe and splash in the mud-bottomed creek …
At sunset we sit at the farm-house doorway on the grass: the farmer smokes his pipe:
We see the earth dreaming of the loves of Spring,
And the sky troubled with other worlds …
But in these days it is darkness we love …
We have two adjoining rooms: the three boys in the big one, the two girls in the little one …
The girls have an old-fashioned bed, and the five of us in the hot night and in our nightgowns
Stretch side by side, I in the center …
And I tell stories … strange, long, endless stories of magic …
I am in love with my youngest sister: the stories are about her and me …
I am in love with her, and I wonder, locked in with her of a breathless afternoon
Why I feel guilty and flushed, hugging her and kissing her,
And why, later, my mother forbids it,
And why, sent then to take French lessons of a yellow-haired girl in the village,
I fall madly in love with my teacher …
But mother is far away: and I am the mother and father of these children …
For once, I am happy … I am nested among my little lovers …
And I am full of dawn … the sunrise of sex is turning my childish world into startling and divine beauty …
I am suddenly aware of a magic cry in the blood and a panting of the spirit …
I am thrilled with the colours and forms of the earth, cloud-puffs, apple-blows, bird-notes …
O what a dawn! Coming up in the river-boat, at five in the morning, I went up to the prow,
And there lay smooth clear waters of the Hudson in cool shadows of dark mountains,
And dawn was reverential and grey with awe …
As I stood, the child fell away from me, I had the first of my new births …
I knew now that to be human meant something full of dream and fire,
And that male and female struck mad music from each other …
So, lying in the orchard, under floating clouds, and clouds of blossoms,
And full of honeysuckle perfume and sounds of bees,
A first vivid passion wrought ecstasy in me,
And poetry was born … I had to sing strange things on paper …
My purpose and my life-work came to me . . . .
So this happy interlude between a dark childhood and a darker youth …
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