74

Revisiting the Ancestral Home

We live in an old house

where from each wall the eyes

of ancient portraits follow us.

Dispassioned they are, and distant,

proud and stern, but forever curious.

Though our dress has changed, the blood

is still the same: look

at your own eyes there, the chin, the set of head.

With all their deaths

this house’s loss of presences

accumulates to Presence,

like the god what dies

but lives still after two thousand years.

We harbor such multitudes

as might shatter us, like Semele,

did we let them enter us and live

and reveal themselves

as we become.

We live in an old house.