The House where I was Born
An elegant, shabby, whitewashed house With a slate roof. Two rows Of tall sash-windows. Below the porch, at the foot of The steps, my father, posed In his pony trap and round clerical hat.
This is all the photograph shows.
No one is left alive to tell me In which of those rooms I was born, Or what my mother could see, looking out one April Morning, her agony done, Or if there were pigeons to answer my cooings From the tree to the left of the lawn.
Eloquent house, how well you speak For him who fathered me there, With your sanguine face, your moody provincial charm, And that Anglo-lrish air Of living beyond one's means to keep up An era beyond repair.
Reticent house in the far Queens County, How much you leave unsaid.
Not a ghost of a hint appears at your placid windows That she, so youthfully wed, Who bore me, would move elsewhere very soon And then, in four years, be dead.
I know that we left you before my seedling Memory could root and twine Within you. Perhaps that is why so often I gaze At your picture and try to divine Through it the buried treasure, the lost life— Reclaim what was yours, and mine.
I put up the curtains for them again And light a fire in their grate : I bring the young father and mother to lean above me, Ignorant, loving, complete : 1 ask the questions never could ask them Until it was too late. C. DAY LEWIS.
Previous page
