Douglas Crase
AMERICA BEGAN IN HOUSES
Unlike the other countries, this one
Begins in houses, specific houses and the upstairs room
Where constitutions vibrate in the blockfront drawers,
A Queen Anne highboy, or maybe the widow's walk
On a farmhouse hundreds of miles inland and believed
By the family
to
be a lookout for Indians though clearly
It
was a pioneer's conceit, fresh as the latest politics
From home: so much for that innocent thesis
The Frontier .
No , between the houses and the people living in them
Ought to be a view as easy
to
pick out from the road
As the traditional six-over-six of a double window sash ,
And just as functional. Occasionally , when this meeting
Of artifice and artifact occutS, a national monument
Is declared, but to visit it afterward is invariably
To be dismayed: could they really have planted lilacs
By the door, had Sheraton sideboards when they were the rage,
Stencilled the dining room till only the wainscot
Had been spared? How touchingly people embrace the styles
Which look in retrospect like individual good taste.
Still, they lived with them and that was long enough
That it continues having its effect. It's been said
Of a house that it's the carapace of a soul : perhaps ,
But not always of the occupant any more than the shell
Of a hermit crab can be said to be his own . It takes
Some growing into, or making over, here and in the houses
Scattered one by one in individual commonplace yards .
The squirrels come in on the wires, bringing their news .
The lilacs move over first for spruce and lately, everywhere
One looks , for rhododendrons. Strangely, as the pilgrim
Aspirations increase they seem to diminish in promise
Yet who can say that out of these borrowed fashions
Won ' t come a suburban mutant enlarging narure
Once again. The Federal fanlight opens in the sun
And on the gateleg table is a treaty to be signed .
