The House was Quiet
by Stephen Dunn

The house was quiet and the world vicious,
peopled as it is with those deprived
of this or that necessity, and with weasels, too,
and brutes, who don’t even need a good excuse.
The house was quiet as if it knew it were being split.
There was a sullenness in its quiet. A hurt.
The house was us. It wasn’t a vicious house, not yet.
We hadn’t yet denuded its walls, rolled up its rugs.
It had not knowledge of the world and thus of those who,
in the name of justice, would ransack belongings, cut throats.
Once the house had resounded with stories.
Now, it was quiet, it was terrible how quiet it was.
And, sensing an advantage, the world pressed in.