It must have been in March the rug wore through. <br />Now the day passes and I stare <br />At warped pine boards my father's father nailed, <br />At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows, <br />Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes <br />Stumble and scrape and fall <br />To the floor my father stained, <br />The new blood streaming from his head. The drift <br />Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's <br />Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endure. <br />In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread <br />rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August, <br />And the floor is blank, worn smooth, <br />And, for my life, imperishable.<br /><br />Weldon Kees<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-upstairs-room/
