Men At Forty
By Donald Justice
Men at forty
Learn to close softly/'sɔftli/
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath/bɪ'niθ/ 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/'mɪstri/ of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight /'twaɪlaɪt/ sound
Of the crickets/'krikit/, immense /ɪ'mɛns/,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged/'mɔrɡɪdʒ/ houses.
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