Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SONNET: 55, by HAYDEN CARRUTH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SONNET: 55, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: If you see a child that shivers when it hears
Subject(s): Children; Parents


If you see a child that shivers when it hears
a diminished fifth, nurture and protect him,
for he only in the schoolyard's fierce abstraction
will know the cry of the lynx, the cry of the hare,
and that of the old man and the young woman.
Shivering is his genius. If he have speech,
he will utter it greatly. If not, he will search
in other ways beyond the ordinarily human,
the hating and angered. He will hear the light,
he will sing the light and the darkness, or will sound
the ideas of them in the concrete nothingness
of tones vibrating in the air that sight
cannot conceive, yet they touch each one of us.
He will hear love where we would behold a wound.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net