The house is so quiet now The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet,
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth Grinning into the floor, maybe at my Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.
I’ve lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can’t bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust And the woolen mice, and begin to howl Because there is old filth everywhere She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart Hangs on and howls, biting at air.
Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York.
He died of cancer at his home in University City,
Missouri on July 5th 1991.
