The other kids romped around the playground: their voices
rose up to the roofs of the quarter, also the "splock" of their ball
like a globular would, all joy and impertinence.
But he was reading the whole time, there in the spring window,
within a rectangle of bitter silence,
until he finally fell asleep on the window sill in the afternoon,
oblivious to the voices of those his own age
and to premature fears of his own superiority.
The glasses on his nose looked like
a little bike left leaning against a tree,
off in a far-flung, light-flooded countryside,
a bike of some child who had died.
I looked up the poet because I was wondering if this might have been autobiographical. It could be. Mr. Ritsos had a rough childhood with family members going insane and dying. I could see a young Ritsos escaping to books.
ReplyDeleteThe line that gets me is the, "Oblivious... to premature fears of his own superiority." Does that have to do with the reading? Has reading taught him more than the other kids about the world? Then later in life, the boy will be intellectually superior, but for now he lacks the foresight to realize because he is lost in bitter silence.