The Shunned House

The hunched-back house was shunned by her children.

Now beggarly winds blow ash through cracked windows,

while the just rains flow down her roof of tin.

Abandoned, she founders; her skirts are rent,

sepia memories of marigolds.

The hunched-back house was shunned by her children.

Walls shed paper news, voicing their dissent,

A four-square rebuke shouts a lost echo,

while the just rains flow down her roof of tin.

One Whitsunday their bright comings ended,

A china vase smashed upon the threshold.

The hunch-back house was shunned by her children.

Their language outgrew her simple sentence

of fire, of hearth, of clean beds with soft folds—

but the just rains flow down her roof of tin.

Now the straggler stays and does his penance,

among hay for cows, his secrets disclosed.

The hunch-back house was shunned by her children,

while the just rains flow down her roof of tin.