And Now for Something Completely Different

It's a sad day when you pull your poetry recommendations from television. But there we go. I'm a mother, a freelance writer, and I accept my poetry however it chooses to get to me.

This is the full version of the poem quoted by Eddie Izzard at the end of the first episode of The Riches.

[This one's for you, sweets, for all the obvious reasons, including the fact that Eddie performed it.]

William Stafford's "A Story That Could Be True"

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by--
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
"Who are you really, wanderer?"--
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
"Maybe I'm a king."