It must have been in March the rug wore through. br Now the day passes and I stare br At warped pine boards my father's father nailed, br At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows, br Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes br Stumble and scrape and fall br To the floor my father stained, br The new blood streaming from his head. The drift br Of autumn fires and a century's cigars, that gun's br Magnanimous and brutal smoke, endure. br In March the rug was ragged as the past. The thread br rots like the lives we fasten on. Now it is August, br And the floor is blank, worn smooth, br And, for my life, imperishable.