When the night's coming and the last light falls <br />A weak child among lost shadows on the floor, <br />It is your listening: pulse heeds the strain <br />Of fore and after, wind shivers the door. <br />What masterful delay commands the blood <br />Breaking its access to the living heart? <br />Consider this, the secret indecision, <br />Not rudeness of time but the systaltic flood <br />Of ancient failure begging its new start: <br />The flickered pause between the day and night <br />(When the heart knows its informality) <br />The bones hear but the eyes will never see- <br />Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space <br />Come once a day to suffocate the sight. <br />There is no man on earth who can be free <br />Of this, the eldest in the latest crime.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ancestors-2/
