dilapidation on the lawn
we watch without sorrow;
a chair, perhaps
is the irretrievable earth
appraising, I think,
this came from my father’s country
where bricks are the color of melancholy,
but of course it’s much older
what drips from this furniture,
stinking old, waterlogged,
carted over by our docile forebears
who fled the land, like monks moving icons
what does it hold
but foreboding, ignoble imprints, strange oils
from ancient hands, and dust
dusty water, disgusting