The rats got in, the rats and the
mice,
Into all that had been left behind:
The clothes, the toys, the unmade
bed.
They gnawed and chewed, nested and bred;
Birds too, starlings and sparrows,
And the shit everywhere, slimy and
greasy,
With the slow rot of time, the damp,
the heat …
The weather raged: the rain, the
snow, the wind,
The sun cooking up a dreadful stew.
The brickwork stove slumped and
collapsed,
And the chimney- once repaired -
relapsed.
The roof sagged, the woodwork
buckled and warped.
Indifferent, abandoned, forlorn, the
family long gone -
Gone to the city, with its parks, cinemas
and zoos,
With its work and distractions, the
culture, the church -
The house gave up, gave itself up,
with nothing to lose;
Jilted, denied, and left in the
lurch, it closed its eyes.
It would have moaned, creaked,
cracked and split,
Sounds almost human to the attentive
passer-by;
For a house needs people to keep
nature at bay.
And the garden? It surrendered unto
itself:
An uprising
of weeds and wild flowers, the trees bleeding
Sap, shedding leaves, shouldering the eaves aside.
The survival of the tenacious, of the rapacious,
In which small worlds collide -
The spiders, the beetles, the ants
and the bees.
From the road, the house became
forest,
Became invisible, not so much decay
As reclamation. Undisturbed.
The rats, the mice, the birds.
