The House

in this house poems are broken, 

I would invent the end of poetry;

we are only complete when

     that image of me in you

     that image of you in me

     breaks, repairs itself.

you are the earth and the earth;

release those cosmic hands which held you

while I set out on my urgent journeys --

     in this house we repair

     torn walls together and do not

     ask how they were torn.

we work slowly, for 

the house is the earth

and the earth --

     the delicate people in you

     move

     from room to room.

Gwendolyn MacEwan, A Breakfast for Barbarians

Ryerson Press 1966