A child's painting of the world is
Two strips, one blue, one green;
And everything else, in his innocence,
Brushed in the wide, white space between.
A fresh, undarkened mind that hasn't learned
That the sky and earth must meet;
A naive, wishbone understanding
Of the worlds above, and below his feet.
But then comes the realisation,
(When is that, does anybody know?),
That there's a thing called the horizon,
Beyond which he can never go.
The limit that surrounds us all,
Against which our lives to arrange,
As we jostle towards the vanishing point,
Whose distance never seems to change.
And hardly a memory now remains
Of the view, caught in that softer eye;
Man's sorrow is that he forgets the days
Before the earth reared up, and hit the sky.
He may catch a glimpse, if lucky,
Should true love ever lighten his tread;
Once again that simple, limitless space,
Emblazoned with blue, yellow, and red.
