Empty Houses

I wrote in my last post that my former Lit teacher, Director Dan, had introduced us to Stafford's "A Ritual to Read to Each Other," but I neglected to say that his exposing us to wonderful poetry never really ended. He slipped in poems when he thought students weren't looking, like a parent driving their child to the dentist without ever having revealed the destination; poetry was a territory that most students would never want to explorewillingly, however much good it might do them. This poem is one that he read at our high school commencement, and has stuck with me ever since. The refrain is the absolution and the saving grace.

The Stare's Nest By My Window

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war:
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

It's a bit of a grim poem, but grim is what the world is sometimes. I was going to add the other poems I have been digesting, but I think this will do for now. Contemplation.