Poems of Narad

A Paean to Childhood

Feb. 21, 2005

A quiet town, simplicity of days,
Ice cream and my mother's cigarettes,
A tiny house that welcomed all who came,
The sun-porch with its warm and welcome light
The little room in which my childhood grew,
The comfort of a home where love still reigned,
The radio that brought the news of war,
Adventure and suspense and fairy tales
Spun for children's fantasies and dreams,
To whet the fertile landscape of the mind,
Our prayers became a symphony of psalms
The music of a thousand choirs heard
And singing that could set the soul aflame.

There was a graveyard full of unknown names
A drunken caretaker always kind to us
And flowers charged with memories and grief,
A quiet town, simple in its ways.
Across the road were fields in which we ran
As my mother wept for sorrows great and small
And shared the pain of others as the hearse
Passed slowly by the roses at our door.

There was a little store of such we children loved,
Where one might pass the hours in delight
With liquorice and candy canes and mints.
It was only one long block away
And we could walk to it past fragrances
Of morning when the kindly sun bent down
To kiss our bodies touched with warming gold.
It was run by Indians aloof but kind,
The wheeling stars their potent auguries,
Friends of earth and sky and worlds unseen
Who owning nought possessed the universe,
The earth their mother, honoured and obeyed.
They seldom spoke but embodied dignity,
In silence seemed to dwell alone in thought.

Oh, I remember beauty in the shade
Beneath the hanging clusters of the grape
In secret arbours where we hid and played
Reliving lives of knights on battlefields
And heroes slain and kingdoms lost and won.
It was a simpler time when mind was occupied
With things within and needed not the 'tube'
To see a world of beauty or of sin.

We moved one day where a child could freely roam
Nor fear the crossing of a city street,
Where deer ran free and clever squirrels found
A way to open chestnuts on the tree.
The skies were clear and smog was but a word
Unknown to feet that revelled in the grass
And hearts that opened at the break of day
To revealing joy in things that swiftly pass.

I remember the harvest dripping from my hand
The berries that were crushed in crimson mouths,
The juice that ran in rivulets of joy,
The burst of spring, the first blue hyacinths,
The cherries hanging red against the sky,
The pungent earth, hydrangeas blue and pink
And the magnificence of peonies.

But a part of me was left in that small town
And subtle images still recur today,
The memory of coloured snow-clad lights
When drifting flakes dropped down on Christmas nights
And all the world became a holy place.
A child could see the manger midst the glow
Of candles where the deity was set
In a place where adults would no longer know
Whose beacon light has faded long ago.

Nowhere on earth can I now call my home
Unless the soul sing out and claim the world
A province of its own with earth as base,
The seas, the mountains and the vasts within,
The wonderment that holds the whirling stars
That course their way as harbingers of dawn,
The sun a symbol of divine largesse.