Childhood by Richard Aldington

I 

The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood 

Put me out of love with God. 

I can't believe in God's goodness; 

I can believe 

In many avenging gods. 

Most of all I believe 

In gods of bitter dullness, 

Cruel local gods 

Who scared my childhood. 

II 

I've seen people put 

A chrysalis in a match-box, 

"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come." 

But when it broke its shell 

It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison 

And tried to climb to the light 

For space to dry its wings. 

That's how I was. 

Somebody found my chrysalis 

And shut it in a match-box. 

My shrivelled wings were beaten, 

Shed their colours in dusty scales 

Before the box was opened 

For the moth to fly. 

III 

I hate that town; 

I hate the town I lived in when I was little; 

I hate to think of it. 

There wre always clouds, smoke, rain 

In that dingly little valley. 

It rained; it always rained. 

I think I never saw the sun until I was nine -- 

And then it was too late; 

Everything's too late after the first seven years. 

The long street we lived in 

Was duller than a drain 

And nearly as dingy. 

There were the big College 

And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall. 

There were the sordid provincial shops -- 

The grocer's, and the shops for women, 

The shop where I bought transfers, 

And the piano and gramaphone shop 

Where I used to stand 

Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures 

Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone. 

How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was! 

On wet days -- it was always wet -- 

I used to kneel on a chair 

And look at it from the window. 

The dirty yellow trams 

Dragged noisily along 

With a clatter of wheels and bells 

And a humming of wires overhead. 

They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines 

And then the water ran back 

Full of brownish foam bubbles. 

There was nothing else to see -- 

It was all so dull -- 

Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellas 

Running along the grey shiny pavements; 

Sometimes there was a waggon 

Whose horses made a strange loud hollow sound 

With their hoofs 

Through the silent rain. 

And there was a grey museum 

Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals 

And a few relics of the Romans -- dead also. 

There was a sea-front, 

A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it, 

Three piers, a row of houses, 

And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. 

I was like a moth -- 

Like one of those grey Emperor moths 

Which flutter through the vines at Capri. 

And that damned little town was my match-box, 

Against whose sides I beat and beat 

Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy 

As that damned little town. 

IV 

At school it was just as dull as that dull High Street. 

The front was dull; 

The High Street and the other street were dull -- 

And there was a public park, I remember, 

And that was damned dull, too, 

With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick, 

And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on, 

And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in, 

And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones, 

And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," 

And its gravel paths. 

And on Sundays they rang the bells, 

From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. 

They had a Salvation Army. 

I was taken to a High Church; 

The parson's name was Mowbray, 

"Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it --" 

That's what I heard people say. 

I took a little black book 

To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church, 

And I had to sit on a hard bench, 

Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms 

And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed, 

And then there was nothing to do 

Except to play trains with the hymn-books. 

There was nothing to see, 

Nothing to do, 

Nothing to play with, 

Except that in an empty room upstairs 

There was a large tin box 

Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, 

Of the Declaration of Independence 

And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada. 

There were also several packets of stamps, 

Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, 

Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak, 

Indians and Men-of-war 

From the United States, 

And the green and red portraits 

Of King Francobello 

Of Italy. 

V 

I don't believe in God. 

I do believe in avenging gods 

Who plague us for sins we never sinned 

But who avenge us. 

That's why I'll never have a child, 

Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box 

For the moth to spoil and crush its brght colours, 

Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.