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Her House

By Constance Urdang 1922–1996 Constance Urdang

If I am in the house

beams posts planks siding slate

protect us

Wall

guard us against the night-terrors

Floor shore us up above the void below

cover us roof

enclose us from the void above

door keep out the angry stranger

Hearth cherish the fire

windows be beacons

breathe out my warm air chimney

while I am in the house

In this room

my eyes be twelve-paned windows

clock pump my blood

cover my nakedness, rug

curtains be eyelids

sofa, I rest on your strong thighs

Where is the soul’s seat?

Doctors have cut up frogs and not found love.

Is this my reason?

I in myself

Constance Urdang, “Her House” from The Picnic in the Cemetery. Copyright © 1975 by Constance Urdang. Used with the permission of George Braziller, Inc.

Source: Poetry (April 1968).

Biography

Poet and novelist Constance Urdang's poem "The Moon Tree," from her first poetry collection, Charades and Celebrations, has been praised by Raymond Roseliep in a Poetry article as "the kind of thing Stephen Vincent Benet had in mind when he defined poetry as magic." Roseliep feels that another poem from this collection, "The Old Woman," is "achievement of the same caliber . . . and so is 'In the Junkshop,' which proves that . . .

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