Which childhood?

Chemin dans les champs - Saint-Benoit-La-Forêt, Indre-et-Loire

Which childhood?

The one from which you’ll never escape? You,

so slow to know

what you know and don’t know.

Still thinking you hear low song

in the wind in the eaves,

story in your breathing,

grief in the heard dove at evening,

and plentitude in the unseen bird

tolling at morning. Still slow to tell

memory from imagination, heaven

from here and now,

hell from here and now,

death from childhood, and both of them

from dreaming.

Li Young-Lee