The Decaying House Itself

They looked up the drive at the square paintless house with its rotting portico 

We reached the gate and entered and went to the fence and stood side by side

It wasn't anyone's room

The bones rounded out of the black vines

The clock tick-tocked, solemn and profound

Watching the bones where the buzzards ate Nancy

We ain't got the room we used to

They sounded like coffins French Lick

We have sold Benjy's pasture so that Quentin may go to Harvard

Bringing empty trucks down the attic stairs

We ran up the steps and out of the bright cold into the dark cold

Dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses

Dragged the swift shadows up out of the shabby garden, over the broken fence and across the fence

The dry pulse of the decaying house itself.