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The Rafters My father never finished The ceiling, but light would stop At the eight-foot level, knowing How far it could go and be light. Pure darkness held up the roof And pine rafters wandered through that. My sister and my dead brother, Not dead then, would climb Into them after supper, Taking offfrom the sprained brass bedstead Into great wheels and flowers Ofspider webs; gray sucked-dry moths, Hanging head-down, saw us coming As the lamp went away at the speed Oflight, standing finally firm Deep down in the living room, A small star not giving up Until we fell, and the four Shining balls ofthe bedstead snapped Their scratched lights offaround us. We knew all the dirt on those beams, Scrambling forward just after the mice (A mouse we dislodged fell all One afternoon through the four-legged void To arrive just in time for dinner In the rice-and-potato soup.) With the dark staying good around us, We sometimes went all the way up To the top ofthe narrowing roof. To the odd inner peak ofour life, Where we could hear, very low, The night wind come to a point. That was the place we went Summons / 26 When strangers came, all ofus shy Out ofour country minds: When my father had city men in To look at gamecocks, we Took off, straight up from the bed-bars Flaring with tarnish and brass And crossed, with a knowing shudder, The not-finished ceiling oflight, And hid there, watching my father Pour corn liquor out ofglass bell-jars. All during my childhood, no stranger Ever looked up and saw anythingA pale, moth-gray, heel-hanging Sucked-dry small vivid faceBut all felt that something was there, And kept looking up, as the wind Drew down to a point overhead. The most loved thing I still hear My father say from his seat In the low, self-sealing light, From the distant one star ofour house, Is "Sure; they used to be mine, But now they just haunt the place." The Sprinter atForty Knowing that nothing is in it, I walk late at night out and down Toward the glimmering mail box Where it sits among houses whose windows Throw light without trouble or searching. Under the street lamp I pause With my hand on the dew ofmy name Hammered strongly in metal and urgent, And find that my body is shaking Out the old, longest muscles ofits thighs. The Sprinter at Forty / 27 ...

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