“Men at forty” by Donald Justice, is written with a lovely metaphor of how when you turn 40 you are realizing that you are no longer a child, therefore you are finally mature.
“Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.”
Justice is using a metaphor for closing the doors of their childhood and early adulthood. They are finally moving on to the next steps in their life whether they like it or not. They are not realizing it at first, but slowly they do and finally, they will not return to the past.
“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.”
This quote is giving the metaphor on how the son, who is now a father is realizing that his childhood memories will now be his son’s and he is the father he used to look up too. It gives us the realization that the poet is feeling. We realize that we are no longer that kid who tried on their father’s tie and that we are now the father who has the kid who tries on our tie. The person we always looked up and prospered to be we are now them. As we stand in the mirror at forty we come to the reality that we have become our father or the person we looked up too. We have finally matured.