The Farmhouse by Reed Whittemore

The Farmhouse
by Reed Whittemore

Our house is an old farmhouse, whose properties
The town has gradually purchased, leaving it
Only a city lot and a few trees
Of all that wood and busheldom and breeze
It once served. It is high and square,
And its lines, such as they are, have been muddled by several
Conflicting remodelers, whose care
In widening, lengthening, adding on, letting in air
Has left it with four kinds of windows, three porches
And a door that leads to a closet that is not there.

The city houses around us have borrowed from verse
And the Old Dominion; their cosmopolitan
Muddle is elegant next to ours.
We think of moving, and say we'll add no more dollars
To those already spent making a box
Of what was, is and will be, forever, a box,
When there's land, empty and unboxed, down a few blocks
Waiting.
We say this as we pull down, pull up, push out
And generally persevere with our renovating—

That is, making new again—knowing
That houses like our house are not made new again
Any more than a man is. All that growing
Up and away from the land, that bowing
To impersonal social forces that transform
Wheat fields into rows of two-bedroom ramblers
Must be acknowledged; but the warm
Part of our country boy will not conform.
It remains, behind new windows, doors and porches,
Hugging its childhood, staying down on the farm.