“Eden Rock,” is a look forwards.nThey are waiting for me somewhere beyondnEden Rock:nMy father, twenty-five, in the same suitnOf Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier JacknStill two years old and trembling at his feet.nMy mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dressnDrawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat.nHas spread the stifl- white cloth over the grass.nHer hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.nShe pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straightnFrom an old H.P. sauce-bottle, a screwnOf paper for a cork; slowly sets outnThe same three plates, the fin cups painted blue.nThe sky whitens as if lit by three suns.nMy mother shades her eyes and looks my waynOver the drifted stream. My father spinsnA stone along the water. Leisurely,nThey beckon to me from the other bank.nI hear them call, “See where the stream-path is!nCrossing is not as hard as you might think.”nI had not thought that it would be like this.nAfter I had been writing and publishing for some years, Innoticed that a number of my poems, never aimed specificallynat the young, were — and I know no other way of puttingn12/CHRONICLESnNew Year’s Evenby Frederick Feirsteinnit—being taken over by children: this through their introductionninto school classes or their appearances in anthologiesnof verse for young readers. What is “children’s” verse?nMy conclusion — shared with W.H. Auden — is that therenis no good poem solely for children. Clearly, a piece of worknthat earns its keep as a genuine poem must work for thenchild and the adult. Such poems, written in registersnmeaningful both to the young and the older reader,nshouldn’t be capable of being discarded as though at ancertain age we have outgrown them. As children, we includenthem in our body’s luggage and carry them with us for thenrest of our lives.nHere I have tried to tell you something of myself andnthrough this, perhaps, something of what I have tried, andnam trying to do in my work. The final poem in a book ofnnew nursery rhymes I published in 1984 is an attempt to donjust the same thing, and also to define what I believe to benthe essential role of the poet in society. The rhyme is callednsimply, “I am the Song.”nI am the song that sings the bird.nI am the leaf that grows the land.nI am the tide that moves the moon.nI am the stream that halts the sand.nI am the cloud that drives the storm.nI am the earth that lights the sun.nI am the fire that strikes the stone.nI am the clay that shapes the hand.nI am the word that speaks the man.n”So here we are, slightly dead in a dying city,”nYou sing, as the millennium rushes in.nB. thumps at his shiny black piano.n”But we don’t care. We’re getting drunk on gin.”nYou stand silent at the picture window.nGaze fifty floors below at the maze of lights.nSquint into time for your childhood building.nYour decimated block, your red brick schoolnWith its surreal Spanish courtyard.nYou shaking your windup wristwatch stopped at noon.nYou might as well be in fin de siecle EuropenAnd the lights foreshadowing the sparks of war.nThese figures dancing like primitives — you abhornThem, their frantic flirting, their in-unison guffaw.nWill you flee to the streets, to “the masses,”nMurderous for crack and crank, any anti-depressant?nYou sit in an armchair with a glass of champagne.n”Happy New Year” you toast, though no one’s hearingnYou absurdly start singing Old Lang Syne.nnn