More a Home

The ivy twisted hard ‘gainst the stone,
As though it had made peace with what was done,
That now the very rock became her own,
A body warped and starv’d, no longer one.

The sun peep’d shyly through the scanty holes,
Left ‘twixt one tangle and the next in place,
And fell without a sound on early scrolls
O’ tales we cut upon the wall’s bare face.

It was but habit, born of options none,
Or none at least that might be call’d as fair,
And that small room, less world than any one,
Did all it could to keep us from elsewhere.

We grasp it only now, how youth did bind,
How much of it was prison in disguise,
And how a circus, fashioned just for mind,
Of light and talk and hunger did arise.

Of thirst as well, too much of all was there,
Yet never quite enough to make us dare
To break the chains that clasp’d our wrist,
And cast away the bonds we never miss’d.

Religious was our rushing to that place,
And opposite the living of it then;
That holy house of ignorance and space
Was more a home than any home for men.