OLD TOYS COME BACK

For my daughter Elizabeth

As from before the ages they come forth,

wholly forgotten, wholly pleasing; stripped

of detail, as if meant for flight-this white wool "dog,"

homemade, smooth as a lancing seal, and awkwardly

arrow-like, on its four back-slanting legs;

these folk-art lambs on blue . . . Once here, they nag us

with what they have left behind them; say that soon

The New House in the Forest will come, its thin frame rising

in a clean stand of trees; and Scuffy the Tugboat

will slip the hand and come down, past falls and sawmills,

with the man in the polka-dot tie to reach and catch him

as he passes the tip of the farthest breakwater . . .

So you have come down, scarcely smiling yet, liable

always to doze off, with motion and the outdoors;

stranger than a log . . . How shall we know to love you,

if not instructed by what loved us before

we knew our face or name?-messengers at

the landfalls of presence, shape; with the washed smoothness

the Platonists say the chairs will have, in heaven.