Tuesday 21 November 2017

Tuesday Poem: "Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children" by John Updike



They will not be the same next time. The sayings  
so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.  

Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in  

the more securely to the worldly buzz  

of television, alphabet, and street talk,  

culture polluting their gazes' pure blue.  

It makes you see at last the value of  

those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells  

of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces                        

like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)  

who knew you from the start, when you were zero,  

cooing their nothings before you could be bored  

or knew a name, not even your own, or how  

this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye.



by John Updike



For more information about poet, John Updike, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike

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