For you, mother, I must have the casket and jewel that cost seven kings their kingdoms.

sympathy

If I were only a little puppy, not your baby, mother dear, would you say ‘No’ to me if I tried to eat from your dish?

Would you drive me off, saying to me, ‘Get away, you naughty little puppy?’

Then go, mother, go! I will never come to you when you call me, and never let you feed me any more.

If I were only a little green parrot, and not your baby, mother dear, would you keep me chained lest I should fly away?

Would you shake your finger at me and say, ‘What an ungrateful wretch of a bird! It is gnawing at its chain day and night?’

Then, go, mother, go! I will run away into the woods; I will never let you take me in your arms again.

vocation

When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our lane,

Every day I meet the hawker crying, ‘Bangles, crystal bangles!’

There is nothing to hurry him on, there is no road he must take, no place he must go to, no time when he must come home.

I wish I were a hawker, spending my day in the road, crying, ‘Bangles, crystal bangles!’

When at four in the afternoon I come back from the school,

I can see through the gate of that house the gardener digging the ground.

He does what he likes with his spade, he soils his clothes with dust, nobody takes him to task if he gets baked in the sun or gets wet.

I wish I were a gardener digging away at the garden with nobody to stop me from digging.

Just as it gets dark in the evening and my mother sends me to bed,

I can see through my open window the watchman walking up and down.

The lane is dark and lonely, and the street-lamp stands like a giant with one red eye in its head.

The watchman swings his lantern and walks with his shadow at his side, and never once goes to bed in his life.

I wish I were a watchman walking the streets all night, chasing the shadows with my lantern.

superior

Mother, your baby is silly! She is so absurdly childish!

She does not know the difference between the lights in the streets and the stars.

When we play at eating with pebbles, she thinks they are real food, and tries to put them into her mouth.

When I open a book before her and ask her to learn her a, b, c, she tears the leaves with her hands and roars for joy at nothing; this is your baby’s way of doing her lesson.

When I shake my head at her in anger and scold her and call her naughty, she laughs and thinks it great fun.

Everybody knows that father is away, but if in play I call aloud ‘Father,’ she looks about her in excitement and thinks that father is near.