gershon hepner (5 3 38 / leipzig)

Childhood is another country
from whose bourns no man returns,
knowing little of the wintry
region of old age it spurns.

When we’re being reminiscent,
trying to recall that land,
we must go where Alice isn’t,
wandering in wonderland.

Richard Eder reviews “The Caprices” by Sabrina Murray (Houghton Milfflin) (“War as Another Planet, of Animals and Devils, ” NYT, January 9,2002) . He says: “Childhood is another country, the novelist L. P. Hartley wrote. War is also another country — and another planet, in fact, to those who have lived removed from it for so many generations that it barely subsists as a primeval twinge.”

1/9/02