The vagrant winds make pause in passing by
Your wilderness of ruin and decay;
How wistfully, how mournfully they sigh
O’er hopes and dreams so rudely cast away.
How eerily they murmur in your eaves,
And rustle through the drifts of withered leaves.
The poplars whisper in the lonely dawn
That we are gone, forever are we gone.
O dear deserted house, when winds and rains
Or vandal hands are riving you apart,
Not yours remorse’s unavailing pains,
But ours whose wound it was that stilled your heart.
The city strings its necklaces of light
At dusk, and makes a festival of night.
Then, in our thoughts, you hover cold and stark
With lifeless windows glooming in the dark.
No friendly smoke-plume curls across the trail
To beckon passing strangers to your door;
The winter birds have seen your bounty fail,
And laughing children tread your paths no more.
The hunted creatures of the woods now bring
Their young to sanctuary by your spring,
While we upon the earth weave to and fro
On winding roads and know not where to go.
Beneath your kindly roof we laughed and wept,
And lived and loved; upon your fields were sown
The ardous of our youth; our souls were swept
By far, far deeper tides than we have known
Elsewhere. And now on shadowed ways
Whereon we grope, through crowded unlived days,
And troubled nights, you hold our hearts in thrall.—
You call and call and must, forever, call.
Notes from the Family
This poem was written in Vancouver, British Columbia—where Isa and her husband, Leon, lived after spending much of their lives together in Alberta. Leon’s health was poor, and his doctors recommended they move to the moderate coastal climate and escape the harsh prairie winters. Vancouver was also the home of our Grandmother, who recounts visiting her father in the hospital:
Dad spent a great deal of time in Shaughnessy Hospital. My little boys spent many hours in the Red Cross hut there while I visited my dad. He died there, not from heart trouble but by contacting internal Staph Infection as it was called and which was not diagnosed by the army doctors. He died in 1955 at the age of 65.
The declining health of her husband and the nostalgic longing for their former, simpler farm-life likely inspired much of this poem.
This poem was found inside a copy of the 25th Alberta Poetry Yearbook. Isa had scribbled “See Page 89” on the cover, which made this contest-winning poem easy to find.