Why Is It that a Child Makes Life Worthwhile

Music: Pieces en Concert -- Prelude, La Tromba, Air de Diable.
By Francois Couperin.
Performed by The Advent Chamber Orchestra at the Free Music Archive
under a Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license.

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Nicholas Gordon

Why is it that a child makes life worthwhile?
Why is hope with each new birth new born?
What deep remembrance, shadowed in a smile,
Brings back the dream whose measured loss we mourn?
Why do we think that life that is to be
Has greater aptitude for being more,
As if we rose not from the self-same sea
To crash in turn against the self-same shore?
Why do we wrap the best of us in song,
The Eden that we left but never lost,
And try to pass that purer self along,
Not counting risk or reckoning the cost?
I do not know, but know that from my womb
*Has come a life whose life makes my life bloom.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.

*Or "Will come a life whose life will make mine bloom."

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.

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