on looking at a child

Even the hours, I know, can be for you

A terribly long time; days even more so;

A week may be a lifetime, a month an era;

I would willingly exchange with you

My adult sense of subjective time

For yours, that allows the opportunity

To inhabit the present without

Thinking about its impending end;

In childhood we’re briefly immortal;

That is why we pine, or some of us do,

For those long days of doing nothing

We used to have, that now we miss.

Looking at you, of course, reminds me

Of miracles—those occurrences

We are no longer allowed to believe in

Without the risk of mockery;

Science has taught us otherwise,

Although Science is a less benign

Parent than we hoped she would be;

If we were able, we might now undo

More and more of what she’s brought us:

Artificial intelligence that will rob us

Of the illusion that we’re useful,

That will take from us the comfort

Of the mundane tasks by which we live;

Nuclear physics, too, might be pruned

Of those parts that make our world

So dependent on a few red buttons,

Controlled, perhaps, by those

Who may find self-control a challenge,

The uninventing of that, and of the plastic

That is choking all we find beautiful

About our world, that’s a revisionism

We all might practise, but can’t do so with conviction:

The ancient story-tellers were right about this,

About how escaped genies are exactly that—

Escaped, and in general unwilling to return

To any durance of which we can conceive;

The wise can never become once again

The uninformed; the adult cannot reclaim

The innocence of the child; nobody who offers Eden

Is worth listening to; we know a false story

The moment it is told, and won’t be fooled,

Or so we like to tell ourselves; experience

May suggest otherwise, but not for long;

We tumble to lies we wanted to believe

Once doubt nudges at belief insistently enough.

So, talk of miracles is pointless,

If not discouraged, then mocked at least,

By our compulsory code of realism;

Yet, looking at you, the language of miracles

Seems exactly right; your tiny hands

Are so perfect, intricate instruments

Made for mending watches, typing,

Stitching rendered tissue, arranging

The material world in ways we call art;

Your head, so small, is nonetheless

The locus of a galaxy of cells

Into which ancient wisdom is already encoded;

That makes me think of miracles again,

Even after the old saints, to whom

Miraculous power was attributed,

Have shuffled off, or been found

To be apocryphal; you, in spite of that

Are miraculous in my eyes,

As is love of others and its concomitant, kindness;

May the impulses that sustain all those

Still somehow function in a world

With no official role for miracles,

Other than as instances of things

We shouldn’t believe in;

Allow us to negotiate and survive

The sterile corridors we’ve invented for ourselves,

And be in view once more, warm to the touch,

Beacons of light, reminders

Of a preciousness we might otherwise forget.