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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 As light after light in the houses Snaps out all around me for acres, I receive the wish to live more Which nothing but motion can answer. I touch down my fingers to pavement And rise, and begin to run Up the curved, crucial lane ofthe asphalt Passing under the street lamps And between the dark houses where men, Grown suddenly light with amazement, Cry out for their youth among nightmares Ofdebt, and turn to their women. Like a choir, something rises about me And I try for the finish until I am doing all I can do. I tell you, sleepers, a thing You know without having to move From the shook, nailed blocks ofyour beds: That wide-open running at forty Is best done alone after midnight, Seeing your shadow run with you Maned with locked light under lamps Where it sharpens and fades and renews, Where gold after gold takes it up Like the members ofa relay team Passing hope from hand into hand, You know that youth occurs In bursts, many times in a life, And fades, and strains and comes. Such a shade is now covering ground. I see my thin hair shine Again and again, and the earth Between your houses be changed And charged with successive golds As I stomp there. The fat on my body leaps Summons / 28 In joy, and the past has exactly returned From the dead, at dead ofnight, In violent motion, sliding on cement. Walking the Fire Line Dead on one side Or the other, I walk where fire gave out Ofits marvelous insanity, and sank Underfoot in the wood and died in the rain in the dark. At odd times the natural border Between life and death Shows clearly; when you reach it, do not Cross it back and forth, or favor One side or the other Or become dead black or bright green. Stay on the line like a child Stays on a crack In the pavement until it gets home And wing-walk between smoky rocks And white, between ashes And weeds. In sleep, you say, when the fire Rises again from the earth where you balanced And stands like the wall Ofan eternal city founded on this ground, You will come back and painlessly pass From the living to the dead And back again through the flame And know in a flash how the rain chooses To stop it just here In the dark, and why a man dies when he does And wanders into burnt blackness Walking the Firing Line / 29 ...

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