Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TENANTRY, by GEORGE ADDISON SCARBROUGH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TENANTRY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tonight in the black house / I am counting houses
Subject(s): Houses


Tonight in the black house
I am counting houses
back to the initial house
in a counting-down game.

But in one house I stop.
In one house there is a window
that belongs to two houses.
So for a count of three,
I have four perhaps.

Or two.
The house is a lookalike.
The window is a half-window.
Through its crazed glass
the dry backyard becomes a wavy
green pond waved over
by thin blue cedars.

The cedars are another wrong thing.
They belong to two houses, too.
But not to the same two houses.
So now I have either three houses
or five houses,
two houses or four houses,
in some part of the county.

This is all very sad and disheartening,
especially if I allow the daisies,
which belong to seven houses
in all.

But when things won't count,
I discount them altogether and go on.
The beauty of counting is that any
number is really one number
once you get there.

Once you get there,
there is really only one room.
Nineteen houses, nine houses, or none,
cave, cellar, or falling shed,
it's the heart of the honeycomb.

You've got no notion, Landlord,
how I need to be born again.

http://www.wlu.edu/~shenano






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