Poem Reflection: He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded

Quick note: This article was originally published on my Wordpress Site!

He sits Down on the Floor of a school for the Retarded is a poem that was written by Alden Nowlan. It is truly fascinating and I thought I should share my thoughts on it.

I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,

a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band

that was met at the door by a child in a man’s body

who asked them, “Are you the surprise they promised us?”

It’s Ryan’s Fancy, Dermot on guitar,

Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.

In the eyes of this audience, they’re everybody

who has ever appeared on TV. I’ve been telling lies

to a boy who cried because his favorite detective

hadn’t come with us; I said he had sent his love

and, no, I didn’t think he’d mind if I signed his name

to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,

“Nobody will ever get this away from me,”

in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,

of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places

have been discovered, used to having objects snatched

out of his hands. Weeks from now I’ll send him

another autograph, this one genuine

in the sense of having been signed by somebody

on the same payroll as the star.

Then I’ll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is singing,

“Old MacDonald had a farm,” and I don’t know what to do

about the young woman (I call her a woman

because she’s twenty-five at least, but think of her

as a little girl, she plays the part so well,

having known no other), about the young woman who

sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural

thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.

It’s nine o’clock in the morning, not an hour for music.

And, at the best of times, I’m uncomfortable

in situations where I’m ignorant

of the accepted etiquette: it’s one thing

to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder

into one in the dark. I look around me

for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.

They’re all busy elsewhere, “Hold me,” she whispers. “Hold me.”

I put my arm around her. “Hold me tighter.”

I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect

someone in authority to grab her

of me: I can imagine this being remembered

for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer

publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.

“Hold me,” she says again. What does it matter

what anybody thinks? I put my arm around her,

rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children,

real children, and of how they say it, “Hold me,”

and of a patient in a geriatric ward

I once heard crying out to his mother, dead

for half a century, “I’m frightened! Hold me!”

and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach

at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy’s arms,

of Frieda gripping Lawrence’s ankle

until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.

It’s what we all want, in the end,

to be held, merely to be held,

to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,

for every touching is a kind of kiss.)

Yet, it’s what we all want, in the end,

not to be worshiped, not to be admired,

not to be famous, not to be feared,

not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.

We are brother and sister, father and daughter,

mother and son, husband and wife.

We are lovers. We are two human beings

huddled together for a little while by the fire

in the Ice Age, two thousand years ago.

What I learned from this poem

All of us want to feel like we are loved or important to someone. In the poem, He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded, written by Alden Nowlan, the message that the audience is receiving is that no matter what we look like, sound like, or think like, we all deserve to be valued and equally treated. No one should tell you that you are not worthy of love because of your appearance, and most importantly, your mistakes should not make you feel that you are not worthy of love.

The author wants people to understand that everyone wants to feel loved. In the poem, it says: “It’s what we all want, in the end, to be held, merely to be held, to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips, for every touching is a kind of kiss.)” This illustrates that no matter where someone comes from, they just want to feel like they matter to someone. When the narrator says that in the end we want to be held, he is saying that our personalities and physical appearance should not prevent us from being valued and loved.

The narrator holds a woman not caring if anyone is watching them. He says: “What does it matter what anybody thinks?” You should not worry about what other people think when it comes to showing affection to someone who they think is worthless. It does not matter what they think. What matters is that you have the ability to show someone unconditional love no matter what. Do not waste your time worrying about what people will say because people will always have something to say and you have the power to not let it affect you.

Love is meant for everybody no matter what. In the poem the narrator says: “She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.” This lets the reader know that unconditional love exists for anyone no matter what their story is or where they come from. It does not matter if you are disabled, or if you have done mistakes because as human beings, we are always growing, we will make mistakes, but they help us become a better person. It does not make sense to not value someone just because of their appearance or their mistakes because you never know if you will do the same mistakes. Imagine that you do not value a person because he or she has a disability, then one day you get into an accident and you end up with that same disability, there may be some people that will not value you because of that. And you’ll learn what it feels like to feel unloved and it isn’t gonna be a happy feeling.

We all crave a feeling of being held by someone who cares about us very deeply. The poem teaches us to stop and think for a second about how we treat others with disrespect just because of their physical appearance. Love should be open for anyone regardless of who they are. No one should be neglected of love and affection.