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Childhood’s Retreat

By Robert Duncan

It’s in the perilous boughs of the tree   
out of blue sky    the wind   
sings loudest surrounding me.

And solitude,   a wild solitude
’s reveald,   fearfully,   high     I’d climb   
into the shaking uncertainties,

part out of longing,   part     daring my self,
part to see that
widening of the world,   part

to find my own, my secret
hiding sense and place, where from afar   
all voices and scenes come back

—the barking of a dog,   autumnal burnings,
far calls,   close calls—   the boy I was
calls out to me
here the man where I am   “Look!

I’ve been where you

most fear to be.”

Robert Duncan, “Childhood’s Retreat” from Ground Work: Before the War. Copyright © 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1982, 1984 by Robert Duncan. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Poet Bio

Black and white portrait of the poet Robert Duncan, reclining in an armchair in his study.

Robert Duncan was born in Oakland, California. His mother died at his birth and his father was unable to raise him. In 1920 Joseph and Minnehaha Symmes adopted him. Only after his discharge from the army did he take the name Robert Duncan, a composite from his birth name (Edward Howard Duncan) and his adopted name (Robert Edward Symmes). He attended the University of California, Berkeley but never finished. Duncan explored the topic of his own homosexuality and homosexuality in society in his writing. 

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