Captain's Poetry Blog
I'm adding this because I was alerted to the fact that people are unaware that I'm actually a poet(and not just another blogger) - so my plan is to post a great poem every day(not mine, obviously) and to summarize why the poem hits the target. Does that sound like a (kinda ambitious) plan? Alright. Holden Caulfield lives...let's go with numero uno..."Men at Forty" - Donald Justice...(I had to edit this bloody thing - they had missing letters an' all...)
Men at Forty
Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices trying
His father's tie there in secret
And the face of that father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
1967
El summarization....
Pathos, Bathos, Eros,Thanatos.
Creeping realization, Alice in Wonderland,
Hopeless denial and love, replacement,
The night, steep places, grinding reality,.
Adios, y hasta manana, mis compadres en poesia...
El Capitane...
- Login Or register To Post Comments
- Send To A Friend




Belle Yang says:
This is a grand idea
This woman at beyond forty understands of what the poet speaks.
I think the Captain's Blog threw me. I didn't venture into your blogs, because I thought I had to know Star Trek episodes ;)
B
Alex Grant says:
Poem
Belle -
I'm glad you "got" the poem, despite the subject matter - another characteristic of good poetry, I always think. I've always thought this poem particularly heart-rending.
No need to be a Trekkie for the other blog - it's just a vehicle for other things...
All my best to you...
A