Here are the house, the sea, the flag.
We wander past other long fences.
We couldn’t find the gate, nor the sound
of our absence-as if dead.
At last the house opens its silence,
we enter, step over abandoned stuff,
dead rats, empty farewells,
the water that wept in the pipes.
It wept, the house-wept, day and night;
it whimpered with the spiders, ajar,
it fell apart, with its darkened eyes—
and now, abruptly, we return it to life,
we settle in, and it does not recognize us:
it has to bloom and has forgotten how.