When little boys grown patient at last, weary, <br />Surrender their eyes immeasurably to the night, <br />The event will rage terrific as the sea; <br />Their bodies fill a crumbling room with light. <br /> <br />Then you will touch at the bedside, torn in two, <br />Gold curls now deftly intricate with gray <br />As the windowpane extends a fear to you <br />From one peeled aster drenched with the wind all day. <br /> <br />And over his chest the covers in the ultimate dream <br />Will mount to the teeth, ascend the eyes, press back <br />The locks while round his sturdy belly gleam <br />Suspended breaths, white spars above the wreck: <br /> <br />Till all the guests, come in to look, turn down <br />Their palms, and delirium assails the cliff <br />Of Norway where you ponder, and your little town <br />Reels like a sailor drunk in a rotten skiff. <br /> <br />The bleak sunshine shrieks its chipped music then <br />Out to the milkweed amid the fields of wheat. <br />There is a calm for you where men and women <br />Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-of-little-boys/
