abandoned houses, imagination, poetry

When I was a kid, about 11 or 12, I used to ride my bike out to an abandoned house on Cousins Island. The shrubs out the front door were overgrown, one window broken, and the paint on all sides was thin and flaking off into the tall grass of the lawn. I got as far as the mailbox once, before running back to my bike - cheeks hot with excitement - and peddling away as a balloon of fear welled up in my chest. I hadn't thought about this until I heard Ted Kooser read some of his poems last week. 

When asked about his subject matter, which many times includes abandoned houses and old barns, he mentioned Walter de la Mare's poem, "The Listeners." In his 40 years of writing poems, Kooser said that he may have been trying to write a version of "The Listeners" over and over again. Well, I had never heard of this poem, so naturally I came straight home a found it on the internet - I pasted it for you below. 

After reading de la Mare's poem, I was instantly transported to the old house I used to visit and all those same feelings welled up inside me once again. The unknown is a fertile ground for childhood imagination and poetry is a venue to bring us back to that fertile ground. Thank God!  

Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser
thoughtfully listens as UNL student asks question

The Listeners

Walter de la Mare

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grass

Of the forest's ferny floor;

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.