Revive the Archive: Hilliary Henson’s “Cynical Seuss” (2009)

Revive the Archive is a weekly series that brings new eyes to previously published works. This week we look at “Cynical Seuss” by Hilliary Henson. This piece was originally published in volume 15 of The York Review.

The first thing you’ll notice
As you start to grow
Are the millions of things
You never can know
And the trillions of things
You never can be
And the firm limitations
Placed on you and me.
’Cause try as you might
You can never become
A lake or a whisper,
Or grape bubble gum
And you’ll never quite learn
All the things you don’t know
Like the right in the wrong
Or the ‘yes’ in the ‘no.’
And I may as well tell you
You can’t learn the name,
Of everything in
the world — Just the same —
You might learn the stars
Coast your way through mathematics
And even make ‘A’s in
Space aerodynamics,
But there’ll always be things
You never may say
Were mastered by you
Or might be someday.
Knowledge eludes you
At times in your life
And you must be prepared
For the world is quite rife
With things you can’t do
And things you can’t be
And not a few things
That you can’t even see!
And I know that they now
That we know that they know
Of the millions of places
We never can go;
Like the side of the world
Where the sun doesn’t set,
Or the moon-base on Pluto —
(It isn’t built yet.)
Or the world where he moon
Really is made of cheese
Or the opposites world
Where the skies are the seas.
So don’t sit there dreaming
Of those far-off shores
You can’t just go wanting
What never was yours.
You’ve got to accept
That some things can’t be
For all of the reasons,
You clearly can see…
So when you succeed
It’ll be all the sweeter
For you’ve gone the distance
And run every meter.
With your head in the here
And your heart in the now
Your mind on the truth
And your feet on the ground.
You won’t let them tell you
(’cause you know it’s not true)
That the only thing stopping
Your ‘doing’ is you.
For this ‘anything’
Which they say you can be
Is not for the likes
Of the ‘you’ and the ‘me.’
’Cause we’re oh-so-much smarter
Than people who think
That miracles happen
With a nod and a wink.
’Cause we’re wiser and braver
and right-er than they,
Who think that the Romans
Built Rome in a day.
Who thinks they can ‘be’
The dark or the light
But we know it just isn’t possible
— Right?