My old flame, my wife! <br />Remember our lists of birds? <br />One morning last summer, I drove <br />by our house in Maine. It was still <br />on top of its hill - <br /> <br />Now a red ear of Indian maize <br />was splashed on the door. <br />Old Glory with thirteen stripes <br />hung on a pole. The clapboard <br />was old-red schoolhouse red. <br /> <br />Inside, a new landlord, <br />a new wife, a new broom! <br />Atlantic seaboard antique shop <br />pewter and plunder <br />shone in each room. <br /> <br />A new frontier! <br />No running next door <br />now to phone the sheriff <br />for his taxi to Bath <br />and the State Liquor Store! <br /> <br />No one saw your ghostly <br />imaginary lover <br />stare through the window <br />and tighten <br />the scarf at his throat. <br /> <br />Health to the new people, <br />health to their flag, to their old <br />restored house on the hill! <br />Everything had been swept bare, <br />furnished, garnished and aired. <br /> <br />Everything's changed for the best - <br />how quivering and fierce we were, <br />there snowbound together, <br />simmering like wasps <br />in our tent of books! <br /> <br />Poor ghost, old love, speak <br />with your old voice <br />of flaming insight <br />that kept us awake all night. <br />In one bed and apart, <br /> <br />we heard the plow <br />groaning up hill - <br />a red light, then a blue, <br />as it tossed off the snow <br />to the side of the road.<br /><br />Robert Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-flame/
