The girl who knew at twenty-one
She was too strong and pure for marriage
Is pregnant, and hoping for a son
To join the girl in the baby-carriage;


The seven-year-old who in the drab
East End dreamed of the jockey’s speed
Is happy to drive a taxicab
Now that he has six mouths to feed;


And of course the boy at the public school,
Born to an ancient name and grand,
Remained a simpering heartless fool
And became a solicitor, as he planned.


Some find that they cannot fight free
Of the usual domestic messes,
Some put on quiet misery
Thoughtlessly every day, like glasses;


And the last, most cherished mystery,
How I have grown to what I am,
Is stripped in the documentary
To the logic of a diagram:


Urge endowed by the mindless gene
Colliding with hopeless circumstance
Is all our various lives have been,
Mathematical, immune to chance.


Yet each of them, staring from the screen
And whispering “You are one of us,”
Defies me to say that what I’ve seen
Makes life any less mysterious.

 

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 21 Number 1, on page 44
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