Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children -- John Updike

(Poem #92)Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children They will not be the same next time. The sayings    so cute, just slightly off, will be corrected.    Their eyes will be more skeptical, plugged in    the more securely to the worldly buzz    of television, alphabet, and street talk,    culture polluting their gazes' pure blue.    It makes you see at last the value of    those boring aunts and neighbors (their smells    of summer sweat and cigarettes, their faces                         like shapes of sky between shade-giving leaves)    who knew you from the start, when you were zero,    cooing their nothings before you could be bored    or knew a name, not even your own, or how    this world brave with hellos turns all goodbye. -- John Updike