Classic Poem

I have pushed the go-cart into Central Park
And sit there beside the drive with my sickly boy …

I am so overborne with the oppression of black despair
I sit, lost in a daze …
I cannot bring myself out of myself to see the glow and sparkle of the green world;
Miserably I try to play with my son, speaking meaningless things …

Why am I so black?
Why does it seem so impossible to live among people,
To have a wife and be a father and earn my living?
Why is the child so sickly? Is he sick with the sickness in his father's soul?

What do I want? where shall I seek it?
Is it rest, or romance, or change that I need?

And then something comes over the child: he begins to tremble,
His face grows deadly white, he gasps,
He is wrenched with a convulsion, the foam flecking his lips …

My heart is torn open with a hot father-love, a despairing father-love,
I snatch him up in my arms, desperately looking this way and that …

An automobile is passing: I hail it: we race through the streets home …
I carry him up the stairs into the house to my wife …

He is soon all right: but how terrible life is!