The Ancestors Poem by Allen Tate

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