Children

The children pass us by, trundling their days behind them like so many toys in rapt procession, ever towards the light. Call it a charade, or play, or merely an impassioned waste of time. They will not mind. They do not fear the stamp and thunder of the noun. It is the unceasing homily of verbs through which they move and breathe, purged in their sweet sacrament of jelly beans and mud-pies -- the dazzling native joy of dirty hands. Is it their indifference to us and all our net divisions. which makes us love them? Soon enough, they are gone with their desperate games and easy noise. This is the hush of what is remembered. The children at last surpass us all who once ourselves may have been children in a time as dim and sepulchral as evening. They turn a corner and are gone, without a word or prayer, without our benison. At night we set like suns. They will be loved