My little one whose tongue is dumb,
 whose fingers cannot hold to things,
 who is so mercilessly young,
 he leaps upon the instant things,

 I hold him not. Indeed, who could?
 He runs into the burning wood.
 Follow, follow if you can!
 He will come out grown a man

 and not remember whom he kissed,
 who caught him by the slender wrist
 and bound him by a tender yoke
 which, understanding not, he broke.

I don’t think we have any of Tennessee Williams’ work on Minstrels, do we?

Am not much of a critic (not yet) but I can say that I love this poem for its faintly wistful charm. Not even sure what it is about it that reminds me of lost innocence and the passage of time. Most of the times, we only remember what we lost with time, rarely what we gained. The memory clings to the negative!

— Lakshmi

Links

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams

Mitchell’s “Beatrix is Three” makes a nice companion piece to today’s poem:
Poem #810