A House Divided – Kyle Dargan
On a railroad car in your America,
I made the acquaintance of a man
who sang a life-song with these lyrics:
“Do whatever you can/ to avoid
becoming a roofing man.”
I think maybe you’d deem his tenor
elitist, or you’d hear him as falling
off working-class key. He sang
not from his heart but his pulsing
imagination, where every roof is
sloped like a spire and Sequoia tall.
Who would wish for themselves, another,
such a treacherous climb? In your America,
a clay-colored colt stomps, its hooves
cursing the barn’s chronic lean.
In your America, blood pulses
within the fields, slow-poaching a mill saw’s
buried flesh. In my America, my father
awakens again thankful that my face
is not the face returning his glare
from above eleven o’clock news
murder headlines. In his imagination,
the odds are just as convincing
that I would be posted on a corner
pushing powder instead of poems—
no reflection of him as a father nor me
as a son. We were merely born
in a city where the rues beyond our doors
were the streets that shanghaied souls. I
To you, my America appears
distant, if even real at all. While you are
barely visible to me. Yet we continue
stealing glances at each other
from across the tattered hallways
of this overgrown house we call
a nation—every minute
a new wall erected, a bedroom added
beneath its leaking canopy of dreams.
We hear the dripping, we feel drafts
wrap cold fingers about our necks,
but neither you or I trust each other
to hold the ladder or to ascend.
Kyle Dargan’s poem “A House Divided” offers a unique look into the fractured identity of a country, inspired by a train ride Dargan took from Washington to Atlanta. The title of the poem itself is inspired by a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln that says “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It sets the stage for the shared yet disconnected lives of those living in the same nation. Kyle Dargan utilizes tactile imagery, a fractured structure, and observative language to explore the various angles from which individuality and group negligence have begun to give way to the widening foundations of a country. The poem is difficult for the reader and seeks to make the reader face their accountability for the problems of divide through calls for individual contemplation leading to hopes of unity.
The speaker in “A House Divided” observes and participates in the turmoil of the nation, embodying a voice of critical self-reflection. The tone shifts between a resolute acceptance of the fractured nation and a subtle yearning for reconciliation. This duality in the time is found in lines such as, “I tell myself this is not my house,” / though it is, though it is,” where the repetition showcases the conflict within the speaker about the land and country they know and how it looks so different through someone else’s eyes yet it’s still the same. The speaker is full of reflection as they ponder the weight of shared accountability and emotional cost of being a resident in a divided society. Calling the reader directly at certain times, such as, “You feel the tremor, don’t you?” The speaker thus implicates themselves but also tugs the audience into the conversation, forcing them to consider their own part in this country and how they play a part in our unity or more important our division.
Not only does the speaker play a major role in this poem but the title holds significant meaning as well. The title, “A House Divided,” carries significant weight as it directly references Abraham Lincoln’s warning about the perils of a nation split by opposing ideologies. This allusion anchors the poem from the very beginning politically and historically, into a frame of tension, reminding the reader that division has been a long-standing skeleton in the cupboard. The title finds a metaphorical determination in its inherent irony suggesting that one shared but shattered space can harbor so many divided and divided citizens. The word “house” evokes a sense of domesticity and unity, while “divided” juxtaposes that ideal with the stark reality of fragmentation. This duality mirrors the poem’s exploration of the tension between belonging and alienation, unity and disunity. The simplicity of the title is a poignant display of its depth; a nation in disarray with all hope in their holding onto the notion of good recovery for the “house.”
One of the lines that sticks out to me in the poem is “The body is a house divided / by the weight of its own name.” This line itself helps you interpret the main theme of the poem, which addresses the internal conflict between identity and society’s imposed labels. The body, a symbol of ourselves and our soul, is fractured under the strain of societal expectations and personal history. The notion of being “divided” suggests a struggle, where the individual must navigate the tension between internal desires and external judgments. Dargan’s use of “the weight of its own name” points to just how heavy identity feels words given to us or taken upon us cause inherently detrimental habits or gross alterations in how we perceive ourselves and how others see us. The phrase relates to the central theme of the poem, which is a meditation on belonging, on the struggles for unity between the people assumed to belong and a world assumed to belong with them.
