Happy Birthday

Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day -
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satelite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be

That hesitant figure, eddying away
like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give and take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire ones irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show -
How selfhood begins with a walking away
And love is proved in the letting go

(Cecil Day Lewis)