A Sad Child
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 your head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.
Notes
Le Guin's Six Quatrains watches the natural world change with the seasons, while Margaret Atwood's A Sad Child turns toward a sadness that refuses to follow any predictable rhythm. The poem begins with almost practical advice: eat an orange, take a walk, find something to occupy yourself. Yet beneath these ordinary suggestions lies the uncomfortable recognition that some feelings cannot be reasoned away, however much we try to manage them. We often treat sadness as a problem that must have a solution, imagining that happiness is the natural condition to which we should eventually return. Atwood exposes the limits of this expectation. The more we insist that suffering must serve some purpose or disappear through effort, the harder it becomes to acknowledge it as part of our experience. Even the desire to overcome sadness can become another way of remaining trapped within it. October's decay takes an emotional form here, in the slow wearing away of our confidence that everything can be repaired. There are days when the world continues around us, full of ordinary pleasures, while something within us remains untouched by them. Perhaps growing older also means learning to live with feelings that have no immediate resolution. #MargaretAtwood #sadness #melancholy #Poetry #acceptance