Growing up

On my bookshelf there is a well read anthology of poems, ‘The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart’. In section #2 of this book, “Fathers’ Prayers for Sons and Daughters”, there is an excerpt from a poem by William Butler Yeats.

This poem seems apt for today’s blog, because recently I have had several conversations with friends about the precariousness of watching their children, in today’s crazy world, grow from tiny bundles of joy into an adult mixture of seemingly contradictory dualisms.

Every parent wants their child to enter into the fullness of life with wisdom, courage, skill, compassion and grace. Most would want their child to have many friends and to choose a decent partner based on heart love. Most will fret for many years; possibly, many more years than at first seemed necessary.

How does the rainbow magic of a child’s presence stay whole through the storm?

For a bit of clarification, near the end of his poem, Yeats writes about “Helen” and the “Great Queen”. These would be Helen of Troy, who chose to abandon her husband and child for an affair with Paris (resulting in the Trojan War), and, Aphrodite, who, although married to the great blacksmith/craftsman Hephaestus, had many, many lovers.

Interesting to note that the “bandy-legs” of Hephaestus were the result of his parents (Zeus and Hera) tossing him outside the family home because he was an ugly baby.

A Prayer for my Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack— and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that Great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-legged smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

William Butler Yeats