The Sweet Children of War

            “Baby Villon” is a poem by Phillip Levine, lamenting the struggles of child soldiers in war torn regions. This is developed through the conversation between the speaker and his child cousin. Each stanza extrapolates deeper into the horrors the children warriors face, and what everyday life has been like since their conception. The speaker realizes that though they are related and likely look and think very similarly, being born worlds apart, into vastly different situations can make a completely different individual.

            In the first stanza, the child is speaking about how he is mistaken as white, black, Jewish, or Arab in different parts of the world, yet he feels he must always fight. This is the first glimpse at the sort of life this child must lead. His race/being is mistaken and he feels harassed the world over, thus he is always on guard. “Seven thick little fingers” (Line 5), is the first time it is hinted that the speaker is talking with a child. He uses those fingers to designate rank, but that rank carries with it no pride or disgust; it just is. This helps to form the picture of an individual who is not only young, but is hardened by his burdens in the world.

            The child wishes to hear of the narrator’s father, the uncle that seems to have passed on, then immediately follows up with talk of a war in North Africa. This is the Middle East, and when matched with how his ethnicity is confused, the child is likely a young tan boy, raised in a land torn by religious and territorial wars. The child speaks of the losses he has had to endure, his brother and his father, implying that he lacks a father figure, and has had to play that role in his life. The speaker’s cousin must also come from a land which does not have enough food, for he ate glass covered bread, unthinking of the consequences. The child says, “Here they live, here they live and not die” (Line 16), describing just how much carnage he witnesses daily.

            In stanza 5, the cousin tries to lighten the speaker’s heart ache, by assuring him that he should not worry. He may seem war torn and battered, but he has the hair of a fighter, and so fight he shall. This quickly turns to the boy running his hands over the speaker’s face, noticing how fair and how unscarred it is. The speaker mentions that this is the only time he will see his cousin, and he notices just how tiny he is, “No bigger than a girl, he holds my shoulders” (Line 25).

            The final three lines capture the speaker’s revelations, and the message that must be passed on. The child “Kisses my lips, his eyes still open” (Line 26), which is a deliberate action. The kiss is not peculiar, for it is the kiss of a family member, but the eyes wide open implies that he is beckoning the speaker to gaze deep into his soul, and to derive meaning from his shattered life. With the last line, the speaker realizes just how two similar people can live such different lives all on based on the virtue of where one is born. The speaker lives in a world where he is fair and smooth, where people live and do not die, yet his own family lives in a world torn apart by war, where death is as common as eating. The speaker recognizes that he too could be this broken child, for the child is “Myself made otherwise by all his pain” (Line 36).

Works Cited:
Levine, Phillip. "Baby Villon."