Мифы малышам / Reading Myth to Kindergartners

Today I read them the story of Persephone and Hades,

the telling of it brief, a child's version of the tale.

I am beginning to think of each story the way

a doctor thinks of vaccination; part of my task

to see they've had their shots,

these small doses of stunning loss,

seeds of grief planted early so that later,

when their own lives bear down on them,

they will remember these tales,

recall how, on first hearing this one,

they held their breaths and sat,

unmoving and absolutely silent in their chairs,

stricken by what the flowers and the birds

say to Demeter in her sorrow:

Gone, gone. Persephone

is gone.