September, the First Day of School

By Howard Nemerov

My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave;he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visibleBow down before it, as in Joseph’s dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.

A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare’s Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler’s Law,
As from the whole, inseparably, the lives,The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its formNor hope to know it. May the fathers he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.

The poem is about a father who is taking his son to school. The feelings of a father who is about to push his son into the outside world and the young one who is about to put his first step into the world of independence are well depicted. Until now, the child has remained in the protective family environment under the careful eyes of family members. By entering the class room door, he will be on his own. The father is worried about his son that how will he take this. At the same time, he is hopeful as well that his son will come through. Here, the poet uses the biblical allusion of prophet joseph’s dream. Just as the dream of Joseph got him the hatred of his brothers and he had to go through a lot of hardships before eventually becoming the king of Egypt. In the same way, the father knows that his dream of seeing his son as a success will have its bearings on his son but he hopes that great kindness come of it in the end.