To My Son Poem by Hana Murasaki

I am twenty-two years old
I know now how to pay my bills
How to write a cheque and how to bake cookies
I know when to take my medication and what creams are good for burns
I can change diapers faster than I can recite the ABCs
Nothing ever fazes me and I can honestly answer every question
As awkwardly odd as I am to you, society
I can actually get by
I am old enough to know
Sincere friends are so few and the world doesn’t care
Your heart will always break alone
And the tenderest moment for everyone is in solitude
I am old enough to see
The beauty in the chaos of traffic jams
How serene even this city can be at dawn
I am now old enough to see beauty in the artificial
Bitter enough to be happily tricked by the eye
But still sweet enough to love the subjective fake
I am old enough to carry
The bottomless cavity of sorrow at its most endless hour
And the fleeting intensity of true happiness
Both in the same spirit of right and obscurity
I am old enough to appreciate art
But still young enough to know about the ones that don’t belong in museums
I still remember the gladness of unconquerable innocence
And I can’t control my cynic’s sarcastic ridicule of the world
Television depresses me, with their mockery of human aptitude
But then reality is worse, because it stops being a mockery
I honestly meant to find out
What it’s all about
And sometimes I found more than what I was willing
But most times the answer was incomprehensible
You see, the thing that bugs me most is
I lived twenty- two long years
And will probably do another eighty
I haven’t a single thing I could teach you, my son
No revelations, no discoveries
Only that relentless drone of questions
Thrown to us by geniuses in asylums and fools in grand institutions
By nature and man-made wonders
By art and science
The only reasonable cause for existence
As far as I can see
Is you, my little angel
Without a halo or wings, so human and mortal
The most perfect thing on earth
My little king who needs neither crown nor throne
My little one who holds my gaze more constant than the truth of life