Houses (After Cavafy)

We believe we own them but In the evening of a street not a soul will be found. Only a few stars shuffling in the oily sky and Orange trees for neighbours. Here, they've lain huddled in December waiting For Christmas to rock them on its pinewood floors And in blue afternoons You can see them drowsing in the barber sun. Relentlessly, a dream has hemmed me in these hills While the future has cast me as a bleak interpreter of signs. And so many things to finish That I did not pay any attention to their birth, There were no labour pains, And they have shut me off from their hearths.