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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MOVING, by JAMES HARRISON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: Not those who have lived here and gone
Last Line: Of all that happened there.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Longing; Memory; Moving & Movers; Property; Solitude; Possessions; Loneliness
First Line: Not those who have lived here and gone
Last Line: Of all that happened there.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Longing; Memory; Moving & Movers; Property; Solitude; Possessions; Loneliness
Not those who have lived here and gone
but what they have left: a worn-out broom,
coat hangers, the legs of a doll,
errors of possession to remind us of ourselves;
but for drunkenness or prayers the walls
collapse in boredom, or any new ecstasy
could hold them up, any moan or caress
or pillow-muffled laugh;
leaving behind as a gift seven rooms of air
once thought cathedral, those imagined
beasts at windows,
her griefs hung from the ceiling for spectacle.
But finally here I am often there
in its vacant shabbiness,
standing back to a window in the dark,
carried by the house as history, a boat,
deeper into a year, into the shadow
of all that happened there.
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