Friday, November 26, 2010

Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.












But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I'm now a man and I must have a house that's all my home."
"I can't give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.













And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I've nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Eggstra fluffy,/Eggstremely tasty/Cooked eggsactly right . . ." But those eggs are "much more eggspensive than I eggspected."

Anonymous said...

Shelby Silverstein was born in Chicago in 1932, and backed his way into publishing. "When I was a kid -- 12 to 14, around there -- I would much rather have been a good baseball player or a hit with the girls," he once told a reporter for Publishers Weekly. "But I couldn't play ball. I couldn't dance. Luckily, the girls didn't want me. Not much I could do about that. So I started to draw and to write. By the time I got to where I was attracting girls, I was already into work, and it was more important to me."

Many of the poems reflect a ghoulish taste that children tolerate better than many adults. In the poem "Safe," also in the collection "Falling Up," a child preparing to cross a street carefully looks to one side and then the other before confidently proceeding oblivious to a steel safe hurtling down from the heavens.

www.nytimes.com/library/books/051199obit-silverstein.html