A March of laughter smacked our hair askew.
After the old man yelled, we ran inside,
Gobbled the bread too fast, the evening stew,
The pie, the apples. Everything we cried
Blasted the fruity cellar to the roof,
Till, cracking down, the old man turned us off,
And roared us giddy up the giggling stair,
Kneading his razor strap from here to there.
Today, when I walked in my house, I heard
The wind laugh like a home-grown idiot,
Whooping across the corner of the yard;
The old obscenities possessed my thought,
I quailed before my own, my savage child
Drumming behind me in the dusk, so wild
I could not rein or comb his scattered hair
Flailing and whickering under barns of air.
What do I pray for now? I walk away,
Hoping to God the boy will tumble down,
Forget the inheritance of you and me
The reared beasts in the pastures of the bone
Till supper ends and the dark falls, at least.
Then he can rock the whinnying stairs to rest;
And you and I remember, half the night,
Our voices fade, the old man’s hair grows white.
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