Music In An Empty House

The house was empty and the people of the house gone many months Months for the weevil for the patient worm timber-mole softly tunnelling for the parliament of rats Footsteps slink past damp walls down long corridors Slow feet warily scuff bare boards The much-bitten tapestry holds many moths In a certain curtain'd room the halting steps evade chairs white shrouded To twitch the winding-sheet around a grand piano thin phalanx of sound sharp rat's teeth edge yellow with decay The much-bitten tapestry holds many moths On rat's teeth-edge fingers preparate hesitate Then falling send as tenantry darnp-muffied chords rusting strings a still-born song Their fortissimoThe tattered scarcetapestry stirsholds nearmany cobwebsmoths