Classic Poem

There is a spaciousness of silence
In those respectable brown-stone streets
That border Central Park …
This nun-like island of stone in the brawling city
Is chaste, subdued, well-dressed, indoors …
Neither crime nor sin nor cold nor hunger nor nature
Has entrance here …

Here I am marooned for a winter, with my grandparents and uncles …
Mother and the children are south, and I, the trouble-maker, am left behind …
I go to a private school, and to dancing school, and am more respectable than I ever was before
Or ever shall be again …

Strange, long, vast-shadowed winter!
Opposite is an orphan asylum, with now and then a peering face at a window …
I shudder to think of a lock-step childhood in uniform …
I read Little Women, but hide such a sissy book from my uncles …
I practise piano in the great dark marble-tiled hall
And sweat with terror lest a burglar seize me from behind …

My Grandmother is my friend: she is little, about my own size: very wise and sweet …
I have a great theory: I tell her that gentle persuasion works with children better than violence …
She agrees with me, so I trust her to the limit …
Then, one day, I am impudent and she slaps me in the face …
That slap still stuns me when I think of it …

Losh! what good German pastry she bakes of Fridays! …
How fragrant and spicy and shining is the ground-floor kitchen …
And the servants—how friendly and comfortable they are …

When all go out at night, and I am shut out of the kitchen floor with the big lonely house about me,
I call up the servants, and they bring their beaux, and I sit shyly and listen and laugh …
And when I must go to bed, Nora goes up with me,
And at times even lies down at the foot of the bed to keep me company …

How I wish I might hug her: I am all aching for a woman …

One day in the private school I call a girl a big fool;
The children are gathered in a row and the teacher tells me publicly to apologize or I shall be dismissed …
I speak up stoutly: “But she is a big fool;
And George Washington couldn't tell a lie, and neither can I” …

So I am out of that school, and go to public school,
After an interlude with a tutor …

I have dear squat Teutonic Professor Paul to teach me …
He is very fond of me, and teaches me about rhythm and rhyme …
I astound him with an inspired song, “The Shipwreck,”
It ends dramatically:
“There came a sound like distant thunder:
The vessel struck, and all went under …
Where were the women in this commotion?
Corpses in the dreary ocean!”

I am sick: he cheers me: he will paint a picture of cherubs to hang on my wall …
For days I lie there dreaming of those cherubs,
But he forgets his promise … an unfilled blank lies for months in my heart …

In the dancing school, I fall in love with a curly-haired girl …
She dances the skirt-dance in an accordion-pleated dress …
She dances near me: I am swathed with fire …
I am invited by a boy-friend to afternoon tea to meet her …
We three sit silent about a little table …
This love is unspeakable, I walk in dreams …

One night my beloved darling aunt sleeps with me …
I promise her not to kick her … I lie stiff as a poker …
But what strange wonderful forbidden feelings are mine!

And Spring comes and my mother and the children,
And I cease being the “only child” …
My mother finds me a different being, polite, attentive, respectable …
I am mannered for at least three weeks, and then I am outrageous again, a young fiend …
She says tartly: “I knew it wouldn't last” …