加拿大 玛格丽特·阿特伍德 Margaret Atwood  加拿大   (1939~?)
A Sad Child
A Visit
Backdropp Addresses Cowboy
Bored
Flying Inside Your Own Body
Habitation
Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
In the Secular Night
Is/Not
More and More
Morning in the Burned House
Night Poem
Postcards
Provisions
Sekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of War
Siren Song
Spelling
The City Planners
The Landlady
The Moment
The Rest
The Shadow Voice
This is a Photograph of Me
Variation On The Word Sleep
Multiple poems at a time
outland poetry

A Sad Child

   Margaret Atwood

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.


Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.


Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.


My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,


and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.   

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