ABSTRACT
It is easy to be unaware that children aged 5 and over have a past, and a past that seems distant to them. Their rst days at school, their early holidays, accidents and spells in hospital seem to them to be aeons away, but they can be suddenly brought up close and sharp with the help of poetry. This next poem is about the past and memories of it, and is one of the most powerful poems I know. My mother used to recite it to me; I have read it on my own hundreds of times; and I have read (or rather recited) it to children more than that, and yet it never loses its power. When I recite it, I watch children’s faces, their feeling seduced by the rst line with its repetition, by the lulling rhythm and the simple rhyme, and by its expression of the realities of a man’s memories. I think more sensitive children are probably touched by its sadness: it is a dark poem: ‘I often wish the night / Had borne my breath away’.
