To Four Tempting Children

To Ingemar

I want you, child, for my own.
You are fascinating to me.
I want to listen to your nonsensical speech
and encourage you in it.

I want to talk to you and know
that we are two of one kind,
that the things we say to each other
are understood by us and nobody else.
I want to show you the mysteries that haunt me
and ask your opinion.
I want to share with you the music I have found
and know your mind.
We speak the same language.

The kind of person we are
is obvious from even a very young age.
We are rare,
and we are lonely,
and we are happier in our equivalence
than we would ever be in any romance.

I love you more and understand you better
than do your parents.
Therefore,
you ought to be mine.

To a Girl with an Unreasonable Mother

You did nothing wrong!
I want to tell you,
although it isn't true--
you disobeyed your mother.
But the greater wrong was hers.

I would be a better mother than is your mother.
I can be reasonable, and
I am always just.

The activity she forbade you
is one that all children do,
and it's normal, and it's safe,
and it's the sort of unhealthy that will make you grow up strong.
And she oughtn't to have scolded you so.

I could see the pain in your face,
although you did not cry.
See? You are already strong.

To an Amish Child

Beautiful quiet girl,
what wonders have your large brown eyes not seen?
Let it be that I may take you
all the places I have loved.

When the whispering evil creeps in among the good,
I will protect you
as well as anyone can.
But evil lurks in every place,
and you must learn to face it on your own.

To a Beaming Toddler

You laughed,
and the world was renewed.
Your cheeks and hair and teeth
are all perfect.
There is no just or semi-just reason
why you should be mine,
except that I want you.

I want all beautiful things.
I want to fill my castle with them,
so I can delight in them whenever I desire--
the voices of the boy sopranos echoing in the stone corridors,
the grinning, smudged faces of the stable boys,
and you,
little terror, little princess.

It may be that you will grow up
to be the most brutal, vulgar evil that the world has known,
but I do not care because
now you are beautiful.