Look at you, a little human creature
Just managing one hand on the floor,
Then a knee,
Then the other hand into a crawl,
Smiling back up at our smiles of support ÔÇô
I must prove you were once like this.
You were, really.
You'll cry when I leave the room
But you'll smile when I come back with the camera
And you'll smile when I flash you on to a document.
But then when we show it to you
In fifteen, twenty, thirty years, or more,
Will you want then to meet your younger self?
You won't remember this pink little body
And its constant efforts to communicate
Pain, tiredness, hunger, fear, bewilderment,
And succeeding only with the same scream ÔÇô
And why should you want to remember them?
Maybe it's better not to ÔÇô
And all the indignities.
Not that they were indignities at the time ÔÇô
I hope that in hospital or in second childhood
I'll be able to watch with your young pleasure
My body being handled by other people ÔÇô
But all the daily achievements, crawling a yard,
Crawling across the floor and back again,
You won't be fascinated by them then,
You'll want to remember you not as you were
But as you are, a different person, adult,
Proud of your knowledge of a world your parents cannot know
Or perhaps with a baby of your own
And perhaps even wondering in the year two thousand something
How he or she will gradually in the coming decades
Grow away from you like you grew away from us
And we did from our parents too.
Two thousand: to go there suddenly ÔÇô
The technological advances, the accelerations,
That world of your maturity, of our age ÔÇô
Suddenly to see it now
And the antiquity of the present nineteen seventies.
But fathers and mothers and sons and daughters
Will still be looking at each other then
With the same affection and amazement
As we and you do now.
You may not have a son or daughter
But now that I have a daughter
I know that I hope you too
Will see part of yourself smile up at you from the floor
Gurgling a message like you are doing to me now,
A smile that soothes hours of tiredness, irritation,
And anxiety tenderly out of memory.
Meanwhile you can only crawl,
But two days ago you couldn't do that
And in weeks and months you will stand and walk
And run and be talking and I'll need more photographs
To prove you were like that too
And compare them with this one here.
Already we'll be saying "Was that her?"
"Was that really me?" you'll say.
But it's true. It was. It is. It's definitely you.
Used by permission of the author.
Just managing one hand on the floor,
Then a knee,
Then the other hand into a crawl,
Smiling back up at our smiles of support ÔÇô
I must prove you were once like this.
You were, really.
You'll cry when I leave the room
But you'll smile when I come back with the camera
And you'll smile when I flash you on to a document.
But then when we show it to you
In fifteen, twenty, thirty years, or more,
Will you want then to meet your younger self?
You won't remember this pink little body
And its constant efforts to communicate
Pain, tiredness, hunger, fear, bewilderment,
And succeeding only with the same scream ÔÇô
And why should you want to remember them?
Maybe it's better not to ÔÇô
And all the indignities.
Not that they were indignities at the time ÔÇô
I hope that in hospital or in second childhood
I'll be able to watch with your young pleasure
My body being handled by other people ÔÇô
But all the daily achievements, crawling a yard,
Crawling across the floor and back again,
You won't be fascinated by them then,
You'll want to remember you not as you were
But as you are, a different person, adult,
Proud of your knowledge of a world your parents cannot know
Or perhaps with a baby of your own
And perhaps even wondering in the year two thousand something
How he or she will gradually in the coming decades
Grow away from you like you grew away from us
And we did from our parents too.
Two thousand: to go there suddenly ÔÇô
The technological advances, the accelerations,
That world of your maturity, of our age ÔÇô
Suddenly to see it now
And the antiquity of the present nineteen seventies.
But fathers and mothers and sons and daughters
Will still be looking at each other then
With the same affection and amazement
As we and you do now.
You may not have a son or daughter
But now that I have a daughter
I know that I hope you too
Will see part of yourself smile up at you from the floor
Gurgling a message like you are doing to me now,
A smile that soothes hours of tiredness, irritation,
And anxiety tenderly out of memory.
Meanwhile you can only crawl,
But two days ago you couldn't do that
And in weeks and months you will stand and walk
And run and be talking and I'll need more photographs
To prove you were like that too
And compare them with this one here.
Already we'll be saying "Was that her?"
"Was that really me?" you'll say.
But it's true. It was. It is. It's definitely you.
Used by permission of the author.