Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to. At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle. And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the boy as he practices tying His father's tie there in secret And the face of that father, Still warm with the mystery of lather. They are more fathers than sons themselves now. Something is filling them, something That is like the twilight sound Of the crickets, immense, Filling the woods at the foot of the slope Behind their mortgaged houses.
Riff:
[Untitled]
Men at twenty-five
stumble before door jambs
they've yet to open
with trembling fingers.
Two stairs a piece
up the landing,
the weight of [expectation**] Make concrete!!
creaks beneath their feet.
Lost in their eyelids,
they see, like Tiresias,
their faces, haggard
by the weight of decades.
Now, the Windsors all
but coil themselves
about the neck,
this automated syncopation *possible synonym?
of faces lost in shards
of glass, the ghostly parade
hums along, listless,
forty hours at a time,
Only to start again
forty-eight hours later,
lives left to atrophy
among the sputtering engines.
Billy, I love how you have essentially created a conversation with Donald Justice's poem "Men at Forty." Your "riff" stands out to me because it issues a compelling shift from both the perspective and tonality of Justice's poem. "Men at Forty" centers around these metaphors of aging, regret and memory. With your "Men at Twenty-Five" you have reversed these elements. Justice's poem gathers its momentum and impact from the symbolization of the past, in yours you really utilize this same effect but aim it towards the "weight" of the future. "their faces,haggard/ by the weight of decades"--I especially admire this great line.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, Billy. Can't wait to read more.
I would echo Brian's statements. Perhaps, now, you can play with contracting the piece, editing out any language that seems conventional, and shooting for some more unlikeliness. Great beginning!
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