Music In An Empty House Poem by Hugh Sykes Davies

The house was empty and
      the people of the house
      gone many months

Months for the weevil
      for the patient worm
      timber-mole softly tunnelling
      for the parliament of rats

Footsteps slink past
      damp walls
      down
      long
      corridors

Slow feet
      warily scuff
      bare boards
The much-bitten
      tapestry
        holds
          many
      moths

In a certain curtain'd room
      the halting steps evade
      chairs white shrouded

To twitch the winding-sheet
      around a grand piano
      thin phalanx of sound
      sharp rat's teeth edge yellow
      with decay

The much-bitten
      tapestry
      holds
      many
      moths

On rat's teeth-edge
      fingers preparate
      hesitate

Then falling send
  as tenantry
    darnp-muffied chords
      rusting strings
  a still-born song

Their fortissimoThe tattered   scarcetapestry   stirsholds   nearmany   cobwebsmoths