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You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.
Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.
Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.
My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,
and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.
Margaret Atwood
Read poems about / on: sad, fog, car, children, child, red, sleep, sun, light, dance
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Click here to write your comments about this poem (A Sad Child by Margaret Atwood)
Deo Giga (2/19/2008 4:27:00 AM)
I agree that it is a reflection on death and how equalizing it is. I also think that it has theological implications too. How many times have we asked that we are not the favorite child because we feel the universe (or God) has singled us out for punishment? We who are kind, or try to be kind, and good and self-effacing? While others (the wicked, more often than not) are rewarded? But, to paraphrase, 'God lets the rain pour and the sun shine on both the wicked and the good.' Nobody is the favorite; otherwise, we all are 'favorites.' |
Lester Tan (10/17/2007 7:14:00 AM)
Hmm, I see it as a meditation on death itself, how it is an equalizing force and it pays no favors to anyone. Hence, Atwood seems to be offering a somewhat disquieting source of comfort to an otherwise unfair world ruled by favoritism and sadness. I mean that's what i think the theme of the poem is although it's quite easy to be carried away by the first few stanzas and to be deceived into thinking that it's merely about how children are so neglected and unwanted nowadays.
I love the poem although i do find it quite fatalistic |
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