House on Apfelweg

by Peter Newall

Years

pass. Empty,

the house

leans, the doors

out of joint, the roof

held up by spiderwebs

under the eaves.

In the kitchen garden

apple trees, but stunted,

leaves blackened, the fruit

falling unheeded.

Who lived, who left then?

No-one remembers.

It was, you understand,

before the war.

Inside,

dust, broken glass, bare floorboards.

A wooden chest,

cracked, not worth the stealing.

In the second drawer, letters

left behind, yellowed

at their folds. There, in watery ink

the story runs; the usual human agony.

But no-one will read these letters now.

The mice that whisk

through the vacant rooms

are night by night eating them away.