Charles Martin
June 2002

For a Child of Seven, Taken by the Jesuits


The little criminal is seized and shaken
Like a globe of snow; locked in a place without
Light or supper, he’d rather have been taken
By the red Indians he’s read about
In Classic Comic Books; there the precocious
Seven-year-old absorbed atrocities
Of line and color scarcely less atrocious
Than the events themselves: Alice on her knees
In the glum forest, facing death or worse
From Magua, empurpled in his rage,
While those who love her ignorantly traverse
The awkward contours of a far-off page
Through thick and thin, through smudgy and grotesque:
A tightly rolled-up scroll on Father’s desk.

From Starting From Sleep: New and Selected Poems, Sewanee Writers’ Series/ The Overlook Press, 2002.