The children

the long version

To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the pre- occupations. You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenated ways of a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, after failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your documents are at fault.