The house is so quiet now <br />The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet, <br />Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth <br />Grinning into the floor, maybe at my <br />Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth. <br /> <br /> <br />I’ve lived this way long enough, <br />But when my old woman died her soul <br />Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear <br />To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust <br />And the woolen mice, and begin to howl <br /> <br /> <br />Because there is old filth everywhere <br />She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair. <br />I know now how life is cheap as dirt, <br />And still the hungry, angry heart <br />Hangs on and howls, biting at air.<br /><br />Howard Nemerov<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-vacuum-2/
