The Porch of My Grandparents

They built destruction in disguise: bleached gray, Long-splintered, marked with ragged rain-drop stains, This porch that sags, and dips us when we walk, Towards all the underneath grotesqueries: Sick powder earth long years untouched by sun, Black beetles, fortresses of spider webs. And what we could not sweep away, That slipped unnoticed underneath the broom, Between the cracks: the dirty string, dead flies, The vulgar yellowed paper. Cheap magazines Are here beneath this honest porch. Pathos And obscenity remain of what we thought Was truly tragic, truly Grecian. But now the sloping boards recall for us What really was and what remains, what is, We cannot rip away with axe and hammer But wait for cigarette or wind or rain.