Houses bear with a certain solitude-
Windows stare with eyeless black
Boards are washed, a timeless servitude
They house the dead, but do they know
The living looking back?
Pale in the vale of sun-stripped stalks,
Out in the windless woods walked
Those penniless pitiful few-
Who eked out a life here
For a year or two
And now, in the scraping interlude
Between silent cars and wind gusts through
Sits I, mock monarch to survey,
The kingdom of rooks and slow decay
Not to say, not at all,
That all this solitude strange enthralls
Should it ever be anything more
Than still pause in a life that adores
All that cluttering ring
That the city will bring,
When I come to my senses-
Release the meadow from its strings
Pluck the power line that has a moon poised
And reddened sun, in repose-
Petulant man then, I suppose,
I shall get in my car, once more and begin
And return to the streets, and their knowing
Grin.
