Perfect Light

There you are, in all your innocence,
Sitting among your daffodils, as in a picture
Posed as for the title:  'Innocence'.
Perfect light in your face lights it up
Like a daffodil.  Like any one of those daffodils
It was to be your only April on earth
Among your daffodils.  In your arms,
Like a teddy bear, your new son,
Only a few weeks into his innocence.
Mother and infant, as in the Holy portrait.
And beside you, laughing up at you,
Your daughter, barely two.  Like a daffodil
You turn your face down to her, saying something.
Your words were lost in the camera.
                                                          And the knowledge
Inside the hill on which you are sitting,
A moated forth hill, bigger than your house,
Failed to reach the picture.  While your next moment,
Coming towards you like an infantryman
Returning slowly out of no-man's-land,
Bowed under something, never reached you--
Simply melted into the perfect light.

--- Ted Hughes, from Birthday Letters (1998)