At Eight Years Of Age Poem by Glenn Bagshaw

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At eight years of age
all seemed so precise to me.
My shirt was buttoned to the top;
both shoes were laced,
tied in the art of oils,
not watercolours.

I said: 'Someday I'll die.''
Then my mother, after a long moment-
strangely remembered as drum-rolled silence-
replied with, 'Yes.'
I cried and cried.
Vast death forever!
Here, where no truant's trick will work.

'But ', she continued,
a clasped grip to drowning despair,
'We then live forever and forever
in Paradise by God's promise.'
'Forever and ever? ' I asked.
'Yes! ' her voice jumped as far as today.
I cried and cried once again.
Vast forever and forever.

Really, what could be done
with such a boy? I should have hung
with friends to whom eternity, at worst,
was an afternoon for play
but rain would fall and yet fall
until lion heads of stars
peered through night.