The Selling of the House
Well, there was nothing left, after all -
Gutted, not just the furniture, fixtures,
cabinets, even the sheet-rock, and wires
and whatever else ran between the walls -
there were no walls
just the outline of the rooms
that seemed so small
without the furniture
or the life within them.
How did a bed, a desk, a stand, a case, a side-table, a stereo tv
fit within the eight by eight
feet of your room?
You could walk from the living room
to the bedroom without a hall
and had to imagine where the shower stood
for there were no pipes,
just the sealed off stub of a sewer line.
The floor was a slab, cement like the street,
carpet and tile being ripped away,
the immovable base of the constricted space
incubating who we are.
One by twos by ten every foot or so defined
the shape or skeleton - a word for structure escapes me now
and all I see is a propped up shell
with nothing left inside.
The attic stairs lead to elision -
luggage gone and sleeping bags
and Passover dishes out of reach
handed down and handed out and cedar chests
of childhood, heroes disappear -
an empty stage of dreams
Whoever bought this house bought not the love -
too trite -
say, the kitchen, pantry and garage
abandoned the buying of the house -
It will not stand, for nothing passed between -
rather away - and the buyer bought a lot
of rotted gutters, fallen trees and stubble yard;
the house has fled itself and broken windows
to escape the trace - be done with cliches!
a house weeps not, nor a home's demise
leads us beyond a borrowed paraphrase -
We shall not look upon its like again.
And so the pen signed its scrawl, steady
across the line, a final forsaking
since memories itch, and can't linger
without at least a ghost in the wall -
there are no walls