Visions
Old Houses Speak
Old houses speak to me,
a shotgun house,
four rooms
on a twenty foot wide lot,
one hundred feet deep.
What a dump!
How pitiful a dwelling!
But to an immigrant
from eastern Europe
in the twenties,
This was a house,
a real honest
to goodness house!
So unlike the hovel
he grew up in.
The walls were solid,
the winter wind did not
blow right through it,
the roof didn't leak,
he had a stove for heat,
he could plant roses
around the door,
have a lawn,
a garden with fruit trees
I see a ship coming into
New York harbor
in the twenties.
Three hundred refugees
crowding the front of the deck,
Tears in their eyes.
There, The Statue of Liberty!
"Send me your tired your poor,
your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free..."
Thank the Lord!
They had come to the promised land!
a shotgun house,
four rooms
on a twenty foot wide lot,
one hundred feet deep.
What a dump!
How pitiful a dwelling!
But to an immigrant
from eastern Europe
in the twenties,
This was a house,
a real honest
to goodness house!
So unlike the hovel
he grew up in.
The walls were solid,
the winter wind did not
blow right through it,
the roof didn't leak,
he had a stove for heat,
he could plant roses
around the door,
have a lawn,
a garden with fruit trees
I see a ship coming into
New York harbor
in the twenties.
Three hundred refugees
crowding the front of the deck,
Tears in their eyes.
There, The Statue of Liberty!
"Send me your tired your poor,
your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free..."
Thank the Lord!
They had come to the promised land!
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Old Houses Speak
Old Houses Speak
