rolled your buttocks over

illustrator:J Byron Schachner

A Song for the Middle of the Night
by James Wright

By way of explaining to my son the following curse by
Eustace Deschamps: “Happy is he who has no children;
for babies bring nothing but crying and stench. “
 
Now first of all he means the night
            You beat the crib and cried
And brought me spinning out of bed
            To powder your backside.
I rolled your buttocks over
            And I could not complain:
Legs up, la la, legs down, la la,
            Back to sleep again.
 
Now second of all he means the day
            You dappled out of doors
And dragged a dead cat Billy-be-damned
            Across the kitchen floors.
I rolled your buttocks over
            And made you sing for pain:
Legs up, la la, legs down, la la,
            Back to sleep again.
 
But third of all my father once
            Laid me across his knee
And solved the trouble when he beat
            The yowling out of me.
He rocked me on his shoulder
            When razor straps were vain:
Legs up, la la, legs down, la la,
            Back to sleep again.
 
So roll upon your belly, boy,
            And bother being cursed.
You turn the household upside down,
            But you are not the first.
Deschamps the poet blubbered too,
            For all his fool disdain:
Legs up, la la, legs down, la la,
            Back to sleep again.
 
“A Song for the Middle of the Night” by James Wright from Above the River: The Complete Poems © 1990 by Anne Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission