GIANTS

Giants are much too beautiful
They live in a house called bigger dimensions
They never suffer from delusions of grandeur
and I have met many giants and this is always true
A giant will always pity you

Still, giants sleep with their eyes on their business
which mainly now is the killing of tourists
the flow is getting smaller since the end of the summer
the fall of leaves keeps many customers away
still, I could never say goodbye
to all my friends among the giants
and they have frightened all my enemies away.

The giants know that I'll be strong some day
for I have planned one insuperable attack
against this habit of closing my eyes when I sleep
because I want to hold on to light as long as I can
and because I want to kiss the small of your back.

--David Shapiro

There are very few poems I wish I had written. This is one of them. There is a childlike quality that is not forced, and a knowingness about this quality that is not too knowing. Children are fascinated by strong powerful things that could destroy or possibly protect them: dinosaurs, eagles, giants, tigers. This is a coming of age poem, the age being adolescence. Compare it to "There I could never be a boy." I don't think this poem suffers by the comparison at all. A line like "They never suffer from delusions of grandeur" is brilliant in its implicatures. Why don't they suffer from such delusions? They are grand creatures, thus thinking themselves grand is not a delusion. The implication, though, is that I, the speaker of the poem, do suffer from such delusions. If I know I suffer from these delusions, though, then I have also gained a certain self-knowledge, a distance from this delusion. "A giant will always pity you" is another wonderful line. I like the mixture of transparently easy lines and ones with more complex implications.

There are poems I admire greatly but have no wish to have written; that is, they don't speak to my own aesthetic aims. Poetry should not be boring.