Renting

In this wrong house, the objects that I touch Are another's: that woman in Minsk or in Bucharest, With whom, on refined blue air-letters, I quarrel.

She is in Europe, but the ice-cubes claim Still to be hers. I do not own my bed, Nor anything but my bones and the angry hour.

I will use it for vengeance on her upholstered chairs, Mock her house cruelly, cry out in a terrible voice . . . Cry what? "Perhaps we are both in the wrong."

Now the ugly task, to lock up another's door, Make the alien rooms feel complacent and secure That will sue for damages if I neglect them,

Then I must write in a thin scream to Algiers, Or wherever she sits, her ownership like knitting In a brutal pile on her acquisitive lap.

If I owned my own house, I would be bright as fire In every room, and stare out of every window, My face as large as the window could safely frame.

My smell would inhabit the coats in the coat closets, The stove would burn eagerly at my arrival, The bed protect me like my armored shell,

And I would be right on every known occasion, Intelligent to the point of inspiration I would blind the woodwork with my mastery.

But now I write: "Chère madame, it is a pity We cannot agree, but your objects are against me. I have been patronized by a table lamp

You will not stop owning, by sneering candlesticks Made a fool of. A plot, a malignant persecution!" But I write instead: "Perhaps we are both in the wrong."