Drawings by Children by Lisel Mueller

I. The sun may be visible or not
(it may be behind you,
the viewer of these pictures)
but the sky is always blue
if it is day.  If not,
the stars come almost within your grasp;
crooked, the stars reach out to you,
on the verge of falling.
It is never sunrise or sunset;
there is no bloody eye
spying on you across the horizon.
It is clearly day or night,
It is bright or totally dark,
it is here and never there.

II.
In the beginning you only needed
your head, a moon swimming in space,
and four bare branches;
and when your body was added,
it was light and thin at first,
not yet the dark chapel
from which, later, you tried to escape.
You lived in a non-Newtonian world,
your arms grew up from your shoulders,
your feet did not touch the ground,
your hair was streaming,
you were still flying.