We know it for the way it drags us back
The whole long length of years, that Dying House
Of Familied Life, the doting kin come round
To sit and claw at fading Papa’s name,
Judge and captain of the mannered crew.
And longeurs of the tribal jokes and dogs
And aunts and cousins at some third remove
Come miles to mourn the pillar tottering down
And suffer every baked meat of the clan
And duteous bible-keepers of the deeds-
For every petted pride a dividend
That kept the stranger out and big kith in
And with the belief in family, belief in God
And the unwithering State, great three-in-one-
Those little boys of deep ancestral skies
The famed Scots blue that drenches by its gaze!
Yet was it not a stifling in their bosoms
When yearly they must meet around the board,
A gagging, too, that smothering down
The reticence of boredom and the rage to go
Into the soft still madness of the snow
Or anywhere! beyond the blooded claim!
And by new dalliance get a postulate
To smash, if nothing else, the vase from China,
Inspect the highborn motives of some Uncle,
Know Mother for what she did not want to do
And Death the testy teacher of them all.
I thought that when I heard your praise
Curse your ancestral myths, hegemonies
That hounded more than them down in the grave
And changed sunk eyes for stars.
The old dead froze you more than I
After you lied and made a dupe of hope
And in their grip you toiled the august way
That stifles tongues and hardens every mask
Resourceful men hang up to trade upon
When Furies hiss from far off down the road.
Your holdings sold, your woods and groves long cut,
And you still climbing up the crooked tree
To tie dry leaves and withered fruits back on.
You scared off birds and porcupines by this.
How can an old man climb so agilely?
No springs have come I ever liked as much
After the day you sneered and I played jade
To the rich you got because it paid to charm
After those boughs snapped in the sundering shade.
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