About the House

About the House

A poem from A Month of Sundays.

The figure at the window
Allows the light to come and go,
Describing with curtains a house’s share:

The common cause of tenderness,
The record of living that dissolves to mess,
The lazy courtesies all houses wear

To dress anxiety in homely weeds.
Such duplicity defines our needs:
What’s outside must be kept out there.

But graces gather about the portal
That makes an altar in the wall;
They fix an otherwordly stare

On the broken knowledge the world contains.
At rest, through a serenity of panes,
Our worship is holy and debonair,

A thoughtless caption at the windowsill
Blessing quietly a dwelling’s will,
The savage history of our simplest care:
A bed, a table, some love, a prayer.

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