The beautiful boy with the kite
I wanted to touch him. I touched him.
And the little girls with bright gold hair,
The German children. For good luck.
If I want to touch one of the children
I go close and brush my hand across his hair,
Like touching a flower petal without bruising it.
If the child is alone sometimes I can cradle his head.
A light pulse of happiness
Throbs in my body also in that instant
When I place my fingers on the Emperor's staircase
Of dragon-carved marble, or on the great iron cauldrons.
In museums I reach out to the canvas.
I want to feel the place where the painter stood working.
My hands hovering, I barely touch the curves of a pot
To know the place where the potter shaped urn or bowl.
Airless caves there are
And cities sanded over in lost eras,
Where lives have been inscribed upon the attentive walls.
I can feel on my own hands warm breaths shivering!
But it is the children,
The beautiful children, I want most of all to touch.
They will live where I can never travel-
The country of time to come. And they may carry with them
Wherever they go my happiness in their being,
The praise my hands have offered them.