Murder for Tea

A fence about the yard delayed the eye

but tacked its handles there for vaulting over;

elm-hand with sleight of shadow palmed the house

while curtained windows bannered to the sky.

And any man might visit like the postman

and in the parallel of evening hours

wheedle the coy ghosts whom injustice killed

and tamed to tend with wretched eyes the flowers:

for there were whiter houses down a door,

long lawns, fat terraces, and envious men

continually in hunting clothes and drinking,

who bubbled in their wills to prince the poor.

The fence was venom to their wish, they rode

with fierce belittling horses to possess

and found for fox a welcome-piping people

and left them ghosts at this precise address.

Edwin G. Burrows