Dancing Dust
	Poems by Mollie Caird (1922-2000)
	North Oxford auction
Home Alphabetic index of poems Thematic index of poems Biography Gallery Contact and links	Poor crumbling, yellow, long-loved house, Your chipped slates scarcely water-tight, Your wrought-iron spikes on gable-ends Like fireworks fossilized in flight; Today’s guests troop from room to room, Soiling your shabby rugs with gravel, And watch your doubtful treasures fall Beneath the unsentimental gavel: Books, bric-à-brac, Benares ware, Arundel prints and antique chests, And there the battered nursery guard Where Nanny used to air the vests. Nine rusty bells on basement wall Ring phantom chimes from spacious days, And hark! ― upon the murky stairs The ghostly creak of housemaids’ stays. Now goffered apron, streamered cap Forgotten fade; ― the hammer’s down, And hip-bath and hot-water can Are gone for good for half-a-crown. Oxford Times, 20 April 1962 The Dancing Dust and other poems, 1983