When my son was a few weeks old,
replicas of his yawning face appeared
suddenly on drowsy passersby:

middle-aged man’s gape that split his beard,
old woman on a bus, a little girl—
all told a story that I recognized.

Now he is fifteen.
As my students shuffle in the door
of the classroom, any of the boys

could easily be him—
foot-dragging, also swaggering a little,
braving the perils of a public space

by moving in a wary little troop.
But the same sleepy eyes, the same soft face.
We recognize the people whom we love,

or love what we respond to as our own,
trusting that one day someone
will look at us with recognition.

Between the dark and the daylight,
   When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
   That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
   The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
   And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
   Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
   And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
   Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
   To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
   A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
   They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
   O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
   They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
   Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
   In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
   Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
   Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
   And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
   In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
   Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
   And moulder in dust away!

You who threw the rock at the back of my head
        as hard as you could at four because you thought
this was how to make a stone skip on the ocean,
        I have watched you in the dark of a yard
where we can only see each other by a lamp left on
        some rooms away. We can see only
one another’s chin. Soon, you will stay up
        through the night after I fall
into a laughing sleep. Two moths dust
        the same screen for remembered light.
We have all been removed from the lyrics, brother,
        our names will be stricken from the papers.

When I think of you and me and recall some
        adolescent sunrise, standing on rooftops,
blue still the island but the bowl of it about
        to fill with light, it is perhaps strange and horrible
to know one day one of us will die
        and the other will be alive, volume turned up,
his mouth now weighing twice as much.
        We cannot be excused from this
device of road and harrow, from this weight
        we heft and heave. So, you will be the sister.
And I will be the sister. And you—
        you are about to give me my words.