Sunday, August 23, 2015

A Story That Could Be True By William Stafford

A STORY THAT COULD BE TRUE
By William Stafford

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by–
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”–
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

7 comments:

Serena said...

I LOVE that! Some of my earliest memories are of wondering "who am I, really?"

Marion said...

SJ, I still don't know who the hell I am. Found out last week that my Great-Great Grandmother on my father's side was courted by Abraham Lincoln before he met the crazy one he later married. (My father was born in 1894). xo

Jonathan Chant said...

Nice post: love the comment about 'the crazy one'.

Marion said...

Jonathan....tee-hee-heee. I got to thinking about that in retrospect and I pondered that there's also a shit-load of crazy in my family... ;-)

Jonathan Chant said...

Maybe we're related.

Marion said...

Entirely possible if you're from Louisiana or Mississippi or the state of Insanity, Jonathan. LOL! xo

erin said...

identity. it's the darndest thing, isn't it, what it is that we carry as who we are and how we are all bound to one another. PLUS, it's all fluid, even that which is in the past. only a poetry as mercurial as Eliot's approaches understanding, i think, but Stafford gives it a good go with linear language here.))