The House With Nobody In It

A Poem by Joyce Kilmer

Happy Saturday, Broken Binnacle crew!

I don’t have an original poem for you all this time around, and my excuse is that I’ve been in Israel for a work trip the last week (i.e., I’m helping to host a pilgrimage for several seminarians from the North American College in Rome).

Please pray that the trip continues to go well and that the seminarians have a fruitful and blessed experience, especially Deacon Daniel from Florida who becomes a priest in three weeks! I will be praying for you all during my time here.

In lieu of an original poem, I thought I’d share one of my favorite poems with you called “The House With Nobody In It” by Joyce Kilmer. I’ve heard a recording of my great auntie Maureen from Ireland reading this poem and it makes the poem just that much more haunting and beautiful.

A small, abandoned farm cottage and shed below the shoulder of Seefin Mountain, co. Kerry, Ireland

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,
 a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

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