| Poem for My Daughter |
| As you are young and beautiful |
| And full of chords immediately tuned |
| To what you are, insistently, this day, this year, |
| Now |
| And those chords struck violently; |
| Their echoes parenthesizing this you, this young |
| Living, full-blossomed you -- |
| Playing the complex music of yourself, hearing it as you |
| Thunder it out, pause, |
| Listen |
| And your echoes become superimposed upon yourself |
| As if your being were a doubly-exposed film of you . . . |
| You young, |
| You beautiful |
| You now, |
| Think so much, small thought-lines cross your brow; |
| Gnaw a fingernail |
| About if being a woman and why |
| Entitles you to be a person also; |
| Or if today, it would be better |
| Or easier |
| Not to be beautiful, and also a woman. |
| You think too much, leaning to your mirror, |
| Searching in a book; |
| Imagining yourself comfortably back, or not in some past century; |
| You worry about so much. |
| You, sea-color eyes, fresh eyes, black-lashed, |
| Luminous and changeful eyes |
| Look often |
| As if you know too much of what you cannot stop |
| Of inevitability and of endings |
| For all of us. For them, long-gone and mute now, yet, here, |
| Those you knew, and know in books, and love; |
| Those you find in family albums who are part-you -- they live in you. |
| Those whose voices you read with your own voice |
| Living in favorite pages |
| And in songs you play, your fingers |
| Your guitar; and sing -- their voices in your throat . . . |
| It's as if you are trying to memorize everything |
| That lived, or tried to live, or lives; |
| Everything you loved, or love, that is. |
| Now that you know |
| About things ending, and not always ending well, I mean. |
| So that you have the look of a person in perpetual prayer |
| Breathing out silent words, |
| Fervently, your private comfort words |
| Repeat, repeat. |
| Young woman devout |
| Beautiful and veiled |
| Telling the beads avidly, her beads, |
| One by one, |
| Of living. |
| You seem to be kneeling to this, and become dignified, |
| Biblical, |
| With something about you of places Yeats wrote about; |
| Mists, and gray-green grasses stirred |
| And something stark -- a sudden fence of Robert Frost |
| Earth-colored against bright snow. |
| It's as if you were trying to memorize everything |
| In case it should all go away; |
| Memorize it the way you did when you were twelve, |
| Including commas, semi-colons and periods; |
| The Preamble to the Constitution, |
| The Presidents, in order; |
| Except, |
| This time |
| The teacher is yourself. |
| You think so much, and the power of yourself |
| Clamors |
| Like gongs against your eardrums, |
| Clanging |
| Until you run, |
| Frightened, |
| Into corners, |
| Holding your ears. |
| -- Elinor S. Wikler |
| Published in CHOICE Magazine |
| 1974 |