Four Poems

Chareau's House
Built 1931, for Jean and Annie Dalsace

No one we know has lived in the glass house.
Dominique tells us fantôme, a ghost,
and we know that she is speaking of light.
When she was a child, the house was host
to soirées. She would watch them close the night,
with toasts to a surreal and Marxist Paris:
Á La Maison de Verre, the open life!

The house settles in the dark courtyard,
its steel legs and spirals go on without us.
We have been inside, where the interrupted
furniture waits in the grand salon, trusts
a return. The stairway hangs suspended,
and leads to light. Once a woman stood there,
...