Langston Hughes

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is terrorized of the grownups that live with him; perhaps he is an abused child:
on two feet standing,
walking, talking,
wearing dress or trousers,
maybe drunk or maybe sober,
maybe smiling, laughing, happy,
maybe tangled in the terror
of a yesterday past grandpa
Lines 11 to 15 reinforce the terror this child is feeling and carrying with him. It is apparent that the child is experiencing some kind of abuse, either mental or physical:
when the door from out there opened
into here where I, antenna,
recipient of your coming,
received the talking image
of the simple silly terror
From lines 16-25 Hughes repeats the first stanza of the poem with minor changes to the order of t the words; this perhaps is now when the child is now remembering his past. Another interpretation is that when the child became a grownup instead of being afraid of the adults in his life, he is afraid now of life itself, and death.
of a door that opens
at the turning of a ...

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