A Child's Answers

It was something, in that time of a child’s answers,
to live through that summer ....
That was the summer when the giant sun
came fe-fi-fo-fumming over the farm,
gulped up the dam and gobbled down the crops.
Trees danced on the glassy sky under his spell of heat
and fields lay down and died and were wrapped in a shroud of dust.
And we climbed to the rim of the rise and stared for a cloud,
for a cloud with a message of rain.
Every day that summer we climbed for a cloud,
thirsting for freedom, we, the sun’s prisoners,
till his breath thumped us back to the shade.
.... To live through that summer, bound in his iron power,
and then to wake to a sudden morning
of rain’s omnipotence, the iron conquered
by a virtue of silver,
and not to be astonished.
Because this was the end foretold though the grown-ups doubted,
this was the doom of ogres.