Houses

(after Cavafy)

We believe we own them but

In the evening of a street not a soul will be found.

Only a few stars shuffling in the oily sky and

Orange trees for neighbours.

Here, they’ve lain huddled in December waiting

For Christmas to rock them on its pinewood floors

And in blue afternoons

You can see them drowsing in the barber sun.

Relentlessly, a dream has hemmed me in these hills

While the future has cast me as a bleak interpreter of signs.

And so many things to finish

That I did not pay any attention to their birth,

There were no labour pains,

And they have shut me off from their hearths.

Robin S Ngangom