On Cambridge Street they are moving a house. They came

Last week with cranes and pulleys and axes and tore

The shrieking foundations up; now the frame

Squats on a platform, while we pass by and stare.

They should have burned it to the ground. It looks absurd

Perched there, ashamed of its hacked sides, but still yellow

And fat as a circus tent. It has no pride.

Just so, where the tide runs out in the sudden shallows

Near the shore hunters might trap a wounded whale:

With eyes strained seward he apologizes

For his guts and the spasms of his enormous fatal tail.

I think that whalers must laugh like these movers of houses

Who show their gold teeth, wrestle and play cards

With bricks for stakes. They are cheerful and brutal as kings.

Yet though I too scorn pity, I am hit hard

With sorrow for huge ridiculous suffering things,

And I like to think the returning sea will raise

The exhausted lug and ease him off the sand;

And that this house too will be set in some healing place

Where roots reach up to grasp it tight, like hands.