What’s that house ahead,
sunk in gloom from view,
Standing open to the seven
high winds that blew,

All the windows
facing the ditch running through,
And the gates
on the high road hung askew...

I was tired, I was, yet I unhitched my team.
"Hey, someone alive, come and help unload!"
No one; only a shadow in the doorway, it seemed,
And a kite circling down over the road.

Inside the house,
more a tavern you see,
And the people:
every third one’s an enemy.

They would break the jaw
of an unasked guest;
Even Christ in the corner
hangs crooked and unblessed!

And a strange conversation there began.
Someone tore at a guitar and sang-screamed his throat raw,
And a crazy fit-ridden thief of a man
Pulled back the tablecloth and a blade I saw!

"Who would answer me,
what’s this place?" I cried.
‘There has been no plague;
why have the candles died?

And the air leaks out,
though the wall is a sieve...
Have you people
forgotten how to live?

"Where’s the master, to give a guest wine? It is wrong
To have your doors open and your souls shut, I say!"
And they answer me: "It seems you have travelled long
And forgotten folk; we have always lived this way.

"We have eaten grass,
and it went to seed,
And our souls have gone
sour from that sorrel weed.

And our only joy was
in wine, we thought.
And we razed our home,
hanged each other, fought..."

"I ran horses to death! Ran down wolves in my flight!
Show me a land where the lanterns give light!
Show the place I had sought, that in my dreams I was shown,
Where the floor’s smooth and level, where they sing and not moan!"

"We have never heard
of such homes as you say.
We have learned to live long
without light of day.

In mean whispers we are
since the dawn of time,
Under the icons,
in soot and crime..."

And, crossing myself, I walked free of all ties
From that smog where God’s images hang as they would,
Wherever horses would run, wherever looked my eyes,
Where not-frightening people live as people should.

What had sunk, what had floated,
what had risen and set...
Life threw me around
but not too far yet...

Or perhaps the way
I sang of you wasn’t right,
Eyes so black,
tablecloth so white...