In Memoriam: Bly's "For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old"

Posted, sans comment, in memory of Jaheem Herrera (above) and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover (right), both aged 11, and both of whom committed suicide in April after months of harassment and anti-gay bullying. Both their schools also either ignored or moved with glacial slowness to act after being told about the bullying being done on school grounds. This poem may not 'fit' -- but then I'm not sure that anything possibly could.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of these young men.

For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old
By Robert Bly

Night and day arrive and day after day goes by,
and what is old remains old, and what is young remains
young and grows old,
and the lumber pile does not grow younger, nor the
weathered two-by-fours lose their darkness,
but the old tree goes on, the barn stands without help so
many years,
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.

The horse swings around on one leg, steps, and turns,
the chicken flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelping
and whalloping,
but what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and
the dark.
And slowly the kind man comes closer, loses his rage, sits
down at table.

So I am proud only of those days that we pass in undivided
tenderness,
when you sit drawing, or making books, stapled, with
messages to the world...
or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table, with small tea carefully poured;
so we pass our time together, calm and delighted.