Grey veiled, the house,
eating its secret within itself.
On the doorstep squats Delilah
throwing sultry flowers
into the gutter:
petals raped and swamp-green leaves
[unclear: ekeing] out their ultimate frugged time,
to be snatched,
finger-tipped
and thrown in the soothing stream
away to the dreg-end.
And where no gutter is.
no flowers are thrown.

Through the moss-sodden door chinking,
strips of light sharpen the dark,
probe with their fingers
upon the wall, rickety with bare pictures,
cut across the boarded floor, littered with glass
and dead candle-ends.
Effulgent in its darkness
splendour straddles the dust;
surgent, murmurs the death-prayer of
the withered light
within the grey house.