A Dirty Toy Poem by Graham Stone

I see it, the dead dirty doll
There between the sleepers of tracks,
And the creepers of weeds
I see it with its weathered cracks,
A deadening perhaps, of some child’s luckless dream.

I see it, stained with filth and rain
Some rag of fabric clung about its chest
With knees grazed by the passing train
Faded plastic, warped and stressed.

Some child I think loved it once
And must have cursed the day she let it go
But more I think in natural cruelty she threw it
To watch with curious guilt it crushed by the train below.

I think that dirty doll,
That poor broken toy is so much
Like the strewn graveless sorrows
It is like so the crutch of cruel curiosity
To exhibit this humiliation in its morbid hollows

I think that battered bald toy once was alive
And might as well be a dead, decomposing child.