Given Worlds

      1. Gifts

Mirror, rattle, doll and drum:
tearing the gift-paper off
at your first Christmas, happiness
finds lacking only hands enough.

Each dazzling will unfold past scope,
mirror, rattle, doll and drum;
the child in you whirl stunned in chase
of toyshop-conjugated fun

transmuting; to that dawn which finds
the light left on for you still on;
mirror, rattle, doll or drum
has won your colder birth, from home.

I have searched the glass, caused some
noise, caught some I sought, marched on;
these hands no child's from which slip now
...