Sestina

Sestina

A single shadow stains the wall.
It’s of an old man
sitting in a high back chair
his beard curled up on a book
he’s reading. The old man died
eleven years ago, and no one has bought the house.

They say the old man still lives in the house
and has claimed his rest in the neck of the wall
angry because he has died.
Nobody liked the dirty old man;
he’d pose naked in his window with a book
of poems while standing on a kitchen chair.

So his ghost now sits in a hollow chair,
and howls a tune heard far from the house;
then placing his beard back on the book
resumes his space in the wall.
The children threw bricks at the bearded man;
his head dripped blood til he died;

but he lingered for an hour before he died,
lowered himself to a favorite chair
never cried for help, this cynical old man,
as his spirit fell prey to the house.
He sat slumped by the lamp near the gray wall
with his fingers held tightly to a book

in his lap. He was found still gripping that book,
with a glare that streamed from eyes long died.
And they ran when the shadow on the wall
sat straight up in its chair,
from every exit of the house,
they went screaming from the shadowing man.

There’s no rest for the soul of the man
who posed naked with a book;
and grass won’t grow near the house.
But the worms have died,
and flies sit in his chair
by the lamp at the far end of the wall

in the house where the old man died
with his beard curled up on a book
in a chair and his portrait dug deep in the wall.

.