A Dozen Broken Eggs
(Twelve ways to undermine a child's feelings of self-worth. Ten poems are selected)
1. 'Later dear . . .'
The first endangered self
Comes to us
Wide-eyed in her pyjamas,
Wades through a primeval swamp
Of papers,
To meet the petals of our eyes,
Half-closing,
With a query about a school
Project on extinct animals.
Dodo is her name
(After the unwelcome cry she emits) -
A creature designed for certain extinction,
Because it is flightless
And we are always shooing it away.
3. ‘Greater, dear...’
The third never arrives at selfhood.
No sooner does she reach the brink
Of her picture of herself as adequate
Than her parents revise it upwards:
Better that she should not hear ‘well done!’
Than stop learning for a second -