INVITATION

By William Carlos Williams

You who had the sense

to choose me such a mother,

you who had the indifference

to create me,

you who went to some pains

to leave hands off me

in the formative stages, —

(I thank you most for that perhaps)

but you who

with an iron head, first,

fiercest and with strongest love

brutalized me into strength,

old dew-lap, —

I have reached the stage

where I am teaching myself to laugh.

Come on,

take a walk with me.