Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, August 25th, 2025.

As it happens, I am traveling this week.

So for the next few days, to streamline preparation, I'm going to be offering up a few meaty poems

with minimal commentary, but hopefully you can enjoy them for the fantastic pieces that they are.

Today's poem is by Randall Jarrell, and it's called The Lost World.

It comes from his 1965 collection of the same name.

This collection is very much about nostalgia and the fading of childhood and innocence,

which nevertheless remains to be looked back on and remembered fondly.

Here's the poem.

One, children's arms.

On my way home, I pass a cameraman on a platform, on the bumper of a car, inside which,

rolling and plunging, a comedian is working. On one white lot I see a star

stumble to her igloo through the howling gale of the wind machines. On Melrose, a dinosaur and

pterodactyl, with their immense pale papermache smiles, look over the fence of the lost world.

Whispering to myself the tale these shout, done with my schoolwork, I commence my real life.

My arsenal, my workshop opens, and in impotent omnipotence I put on the helmet and the breastplate

pot cut out and soldered for me. Here's the shield I sawed from beaver board and painted.

Here on top of the bow that only Odysseus can wield an 11 vermillion-ringed goose-feathered arrows.

The 12th was broken on the battlefield when searching among snapped beans and potatoes. I stepped on it.

Some dry weeds. A dead cane are my spears.

The knife on the bureaus, my throwing knife, the small unpainted biplane without wheels,

...