The House that Dennis kept

High up in a Greenwich home

a chorus of birds brings dawn to my room.

High up in a Spitalfields attic, no birds sing.

Nothing disturbs the silence of death and decay,

not even the woman, whose face at the window

gazes down through the gas-light below.

A lonely canary is still being fed

though there’s nobody there in the house,

only whispers, reflections and clocks ticking on,

meals left half-eaten, warm fires and a cat

and someone who seems to be just out of sight.

Will she step from the shadows and speak
of the Huguenot weavers?

How they lived in the cellar and toiled full of hope

down the years.

How their status advanced as fortunes improved,

and in rooms richly-furnished and warm,

they rose up the floors

with the years.

 

Until wealth dwindled slowly, poverty neared

rooms lost their comfort and cheer,

and there in the attic the family perished.

As all turned to dust

with the years.

94 years in all.

So many lives to recall.

But nothing is certain in this house full of past,

where time seems to fracture and fray.

A woman’s life may be shaped and re-cast,

as a ghost that intrudes on today,

or fate might decree that she not live at all.

Was there only a house, with no movement, no talk,

no woman observing, no one out on a walk?

Just a woman ‘s profile on a window up high

a cut-out of cardboard?

or a face that won’t die?