I knew not the anguish of pain and sorrow
Nor the lack of life’s pleasing certainty
Nor how much I feared the unknown tomorrow
Until you entered, crying—red and runty.

But once you did my careful plans and schemes
Faded into nothingness, were vaporized.
The glory and heroic acts of my dreams
Were canceled, my ambitions bluntly cauterized.

Control abandoned me; life unknown till then
Smothered my spirit and assaulted my soul—
Prospects of sickness, of want, of accident,
Of failure, of duty—deadened the whole.

But numbness birthed surprising reality,
Wakening me to the actuality
Of a dazzling precious personality,
To a glimpse, a hint, of immortality.

For evermore my heart you have beguiled,
My child, my priceless, my lovely, tiny child.

Now I accept—no, welcome—slings and arrows,
I revel in the puzzle of tomorrows,
Though now fear accompanies the revelry
And ominous fate is no longer solitary.

Anguish and I now meander together
Although in its absence I would rather.
Pain I now absorb on my daily rounds
As I see a future where conflict abounds.

Awesome, overwhelming duty surrounds me,
Discovering paths to success confounds me
And anxiety is a constant consort
In this new marriage of serious and sport.

But mewling normality
Proves dull life a banality
Pain and joy a giddy duality
And Peace a zombie ephemerality.

For you have smiled on my soul forevermore
My lovely infant child whom I adore.

—Robert E. Barnett (CC ’93)