My house has grown smaller

It’s getting ready for a journey

Its bristles are showing

And its farmer’s boots.

Already I hear a sack being dragged toward a river,

Already I see a thin, barely visible track of flour.

Strange,

It must be the whiteness

Of those immaculate beds

Ground to powder,

It must be the table

From the kitchen

Digging a hole in the earth

To plant its knives.

No answer … Prow of a sunken galleon.

In its sailor’s heart the old house drinks to the wind.

But then some men come and say:

It is time to slaughter it.

The winter is coming.

Its meat needs to be dried in smoke.