A Poet To His Baby Son / James Weldon Johnson

Tiny bit of humanity, 
Blessed with your mother’s face, 
And cursed with your father’s mind. 

I say cursed with your father’s mind, 
Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back, 
Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot, 
And looking away, 
Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond. 
Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet? 

Why don’t you kick and howl, 
And make the neighbors talk about 
“That damned baby next door,” 
And make up your mind forthwith 
To grow up and be a banker 
Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter 
Or—?—whatever you decide upon, 
Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts 
About being a poet. 

For poets no longer are makers of songs, 
Chanters of the gold and purple harvest, 
Sayers of the glories of earth and sky, 
Of the sweet pain of love 
And the keen joy of living; 
No longer dreamers of the essential dreams, 
And interpreters of the eternal truth, 
Through the eternal beauty. 
Poets these days are unfortunate fellows. 
Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way 
Or new things in an old language, 
They talk abracadabra 
In an unknown tongue, 
Each one fashioning for himself 
A wordy world of shadow problems, 
And as a self-imagined Atlas, 
Struggling under it with puny legs and arms, 
Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load. 

My son, this is no time nor place for a poet; 
Grow up and join the big, busy crowd 
That scrambles for what it thinks it wants 
Out of this old world which is—as it is— 
And, probably, always will be. 

Take the advice of a father who knows: 
You cannot begin too young 
Not to be a poet.