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Ode on an Abandoned House

Hayan Charara - 1972-

Wind and rain, here
are the keys
to the house—
a missing door,
two broken windows.

Birds, for you a room
with a view—the bedroom,
which once held
the moon and stars
out of sight.

Ants and worms,
such sad witnesses,
the grass uncut,
the yard overgrown
are again yours to inherit.

And you, the leaves whirling
across buckled floors,
please take
my father’s voice
whispering

May you live forever,
may you bury me.

They kept showing up, for days,
dead on the windowsill,
and for days I did nothing about the ladybugs
except to ask if their entering the house
unnoticed and dying before I saw them
was symbolic.
Thinking so was easy.
They symbolized birth and death,
change and rebirth.
It was also possible the tiny beetles
embodied an inborn need
to show themselves,
to turn up in every and any place,
even as the dried-out remains of the once lively.
Or they stood for the burden of being one thing
relieved by becoming another,
which all the world’s children suffer.

This went on and on, and could’ve gone on
forever, so finally I opened the window
and blew them into the wide open
because everything and everyone should get a chance
to be mourned, and they got theirs,
but first they had to die, which is life,
not symbolism.

Hayan Charara

2017

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms

The trees alongside the fence
bear fruit, the limbs and leaves speeches
to you and me. They promise to give the world
back to itself. The apple apologizes
for those whose hearts bear too much zest
for heaven, the pomegranate
for the change that did not come
soon enough. Every seed is a heart, every heart
a minefield, and the bees and butterflies
swarm the flowers on its grave.
The thorn bushes instruct us
to tell our sons and daughters
who carry sticks and stones
to mend their ways.
The oak tree says to eat
only fruits and vegetables;
the pine says to eat all the stirring things.
My neighbor left long ago and did not hear
any of this. In a big country
the leader warns the leader of a small country
there must be change or else.
Birds are the same way, coming and going,
wobbling thin branches.
The warblers express pain, the crows regret,
or is it the other way around?
The mantra today is the same as yesterday.
We must become different.
The plants must, the animals,
and the ants and worms, just like the carmakers,
the soap makers before them,
and the manufacturers of rubber
and the sellers of tea, tobacco, and salt.
Such an ancient habit, making ourselves new.
My neighbor looks like my mother
who left a long time ago
and did not hear any of this.
Just for a minute, give her back to me,
before she died, kneeling
in the dirt under the sun, calling me darling
in Arabic, which no one has since.

Hayan Charara

2015

Related Poems

Separation is the necessary condition for light.


so it came to me to 
carry the abandoned 
mattress to the attic      

                         a month dead my father
		         waited hillside in the field 
 			 surrounding his house 

I was glad to see him
to remember when
the fathers seemed 

                          generic     related     a class
    			  of things as uniform as trees 
                          are when you don’t know
			
their names     a stand
of them across the field 
I want to say autumn

                           aspens     the late fathers 
                           blonde as early evening
 			   wind startles their eyes 
 
and makes of your name 
a sail      a boat above roots 
that rise to stem that rise 

		            to leaf his door and cornices    
                            his felt hat and mattress 
                            empty     it feels like forever
				
above the flickering field     
the fathers shrinking 
far beneath our feet

for Lisa Fishman

Brian Teare

2013

Ultrasound

my father is tying concertina wire
around his garden which is
now all but ruined by
squirrels deer and worst
of all rabbits with cucumber
seeds stuck to their
tails     I am an apex predator my father is
an apex predator god makes
us in pairs      my mother searches the lawn
for four-leaf clovers pinning them
to a scrapbook pinning
moments to time she gives each clover
a name Buck Comes Onto Porch and
Hospital Note From Kaveh    while
she makes tea inside I search
the house for a lighter and can’t
even find matches       what I miss most
about winter is the brightness of
winter summer’s all foggy and
wet       my mother hovers in
the kitchen like a strange tune       she is out
of saffron and has no money
for more        she weeps over her
bleach-white rice until my
father comes in cracks an egg
over the plate bursts
the yolk says see says yellow       my mother
smiles so big and sad she wrinkles into
the future where my eyes
are yellow again maybe from the yolk
maybe something else       my fur is coming in
so thick my mother would squeal
with pride if she could see it     when she
was pregnant I kicked so hard so
often she could barely
sleep        staying up all
night she thought she must
be full of bunnies

Kaveh Akbar

2019

On Houses

Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses.
     And he answered and said:
     Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
     For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
     Your house is your larger body.
     It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top?

     Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
     Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
     But these things are not yet to be.
     In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.

     And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
     Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
     Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
     Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
     Tell me, have you these in your houses?
     Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?

     Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
     Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
     It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
     It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
     Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

     But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
     Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
     It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
     You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
     You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
     And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
     For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Kahlil Gibran

1923

poets.org

Poems

Ode on an Abandoned House

More by Hayan Charara

The Symbolic Life

Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms

Related Poems

Separation is the necessary condition for light.

Ultrasound

On Houses

poets.org

academy of american poets

national poetry month

american poets

Poems

Ode on an Abandoned House

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