The Census-Taker

I came an errand one cloud-blowing eveningTo a slab-built, black-paper-covered houseOf one room and one window and one door,The only dwelling in a waste cut overA hundred square miles round it in the mountains:And that not dwelt in now by men or women(It never had been dwelt in, though, by women,So what is this I make a sorrow of?)I came as census-taker to the wasteTo count the people in it and found none,None in the hundred miles, none in the house,Where I came last with some hope, but not muchAfter hours' overlooking from the cliffsAn emptiness flayed to the very stone.I found no people that dared show themselves,None not in hiding from the outward eye.The time was autumn, but how anyoneCould tell the time of year when every treeThat could have dropped a leaf was down itselfAnd nothing but the stump of it was leftNow bringing out its rings in sugar of pitch;And every tree up stood a rotting trunkWithout a single leaf to spend on autumn,Or branch to whistle after what was spent.Perhaps the wind the more without the helpOf breathing trees said something of the timeOf year or day the way it swung a doorForever off the latch, as if rude menPassed in and slammed it shut each one behind himFor the next one to open for himself.I counted nine I had no right to count(But this was dreamy unofficial counting)Before I made the tenth across the threshold.Where was my supper? Where was anyone's?No lamp was lit. Nothing was on the table.The stove was cold--the stove was off the chimney--And down by one side where it lacked a leg.The people that had loudly passed the doorWere people to the ear but not the eye.They were not on the table with their elbows.They were not sleeping in the shelves of bunks.I saw no men there and no bones of men there.I armed myself against such bones as might beWith the pitch-blackened stub of an axe-handleI picked up off the straw-dust covered floor.Not bones, but the ill-fitted window rattled.The door was still because I held it shutWhile I thought what to do that could be done--About the house--about the people not there.This house in one year fallen to decayFilled me with no less sorrow than the housesFallen to ruin in ten thousand yearsWhere Asia wedges Africa from Europe.Nothing was left to do that I could seeUnless to find that there was no one thereAnd declare to the cliffs too far for echo"The place is desert and let whoso lurksIn silence, if in this he is aggrieved,Break silence now or be forever silent.Let him say why it should not be declared so."The melancholy of having to count soulsWhere they grow fewer and fewer every yearIs extreme where they shrink to none at all.It must be I want life to go on living.