You must come with me now to the house of my youth;
there are things you should see that I long have suppressed.
I desire no longer to hide from the truth,
but now wait for the day I may live unoppressed.
When the Ushers' house fell they were freed from its curse,
and a trial by fire cured old Haversham.
From the Grierson's rose Emily's ghost none the worse.
An unjudged homicide saved the Pyncheon clan:
Death, at least, frees the mad from domestic bedlam.
My folk are yet living, I’m happy to say—
though I hold out no hope for their growing dementia—
so for me going home evokes only dismay
to observe the increase in the bugs and rodentia.
There once was a time, when my parents would leave
for a weekend (or even once just a few hours)
and my brothers and sisters and I would come heave
out the trash and scrub toilets and showers.
Even weeded the lawn, trimmed the trees, planted flowers.
But it's been quite a while since the last real cleaning—
we've grown and moved out to chase down our own dreams—
and there’s nobody left now to give any meaning
to brooms, mops or vacuums, or silverware cremes.
In ascending the drive from the main street below,
you would never suspect what was lurking within
but the weeds and the brambles might warn you to go
and renege your affairs with my untidy kin,
But today I won't spare you, it’s not now for yours,
but my own peace of mind that I take your faint hand
and relentlessly pull you inside of these doors,
hold you here in the dark as your eyes adjust, and...
through the gloom you begin to at last understand.
We are in the main kitchen. Don’t ask "what's that smell?"
for the sources are all indescribably gory:
rotted roasts, wormy dogfood, the odor of hell,
or the carcass downstairs (a whole other story.)
Your eyes start adjusting, you notice the dust,
the newspapers, glass, rotting vegetable matter,
the dishes, grease, bugs, and you think that they must
both of them, Mom and Dad, be as mad as a hatter—
Look, maggots are swarming all over that platter.
If you think that's disgusting, don't open the fridge;
there are dishes in there that defy all description,
They’ll dis you as well, they've mutated, abridged,
antibodies not in any doctor's prescription.
Who opens that door will be fighting off mold
that has yet to be classified by medical science.
Prepare for a battle. And speaking of "cold
wars," here's a paper that features the great New York Giants.
It was in that big mound back behind the appliance.
This newspaper probably isn't the oldest
you'll find in this house: go on down through that hall
There’s a bathroom that’s used by only the boldest.
It hasn't been cleaned since the communist fall.
Now you're starting to see why I'm filled with such dread
at the prospect of somebody seeing this place,
for one can't help but censure just how we were bred—
I can see it on every visitor's face—
And I don't often willingly court such disgrace.
In the dining room things are no better, of course,
to begin with the furniture's soiled and torn,
the table's become an enormous clothes horse,
ridden now by a wardrobe that's long since been worn.
Horizontally all of the planes in this room
has been covered with flotsam: the shelves, tables, floor,
and contribute en mess to my unfading gloom
when I cursingly stumble my way through the door.
An eleven-point earthquake wouldn't change the decor.
Their living room follows the same (lack of) rule
here as well not one surface is left free and clear;
magazine, unwashed glass, paperback, broken tool,
none in current demand and yet all are right here.
It's hard to imagine the reason they’d give
for this sack full of unmatched old holey socks,
or these magazines dating from seventy-five
On to present, omnipresent by bag and by box...
Not to mention their only-right-twice-a-day clocks.
We're not going upstairs, this has been quite enough.
Anyway, all five bedrooms are kept up the same—
that is, dusty, and tawdry and crammed with old stuff—
and I think I have wallowed enough in the shame
that "Detritus" has become our family home's name.