They carried the lamps out as if they were children.
Rugs were laid out on the grass, or beaten
with a shovel on the clothesline.

Boxes were labeled in scrawl, stacked in the yard
like stout chimneys. Where were you
when Kitchen split down the center

and silver spun down the stairs, a pear knife
lost for an hour in a coil of the hose? Did you
see them haul out the clock, wrapped in blankets, a sick man

carried to his car? Or pieces of the piano
in procession, strings whining,
pulling at their pins in the evening air?

As night seeped under the eaves, they broke apart
the upstairs windows. In the half-light it was lowered:
the fat white bathtub dangling like a weighing calf.