Photograph of a Baby (Brasch)
Photograph of a Baby, by Charles Brasch (1909-1973)
Round-head round-eyed Sebastian,
Wrinkling his eyes against the sun,
Looks into the distance and will not see anyone.
What does he find there
At the end of his absorbing stare,
Where Mt. Herbert floats weightless in the glass-clear air?
Is it something he does not meet
Among us, that he will not be asked to greet,
To laugh at or yield to, because it knows how to treat
Him as an equal, as fact,
The present and plain, which neither bluffness nor tact
Can make more real or charm away or even distract.
Sure he can udnerstand,
It is primal like himself, like the sun on his hand,
Disdaining to raise a smoke-screen of reasons for what must be, and
Ignores all conditions. For though objects are mulitplied
Hourly in his world, he cannot put them aside,
But always must try to see them as clearly as though they had died,
As still and as final; and he
has the air of one looking back, by death set free,
Who sees the strangeness of life, and what things are trying to be.