01-10-2016, 08:16 AM
@Akira - Thank you for the excellent critique. To the charge of formality and even stuffiness, I plead guilty. Perhaps it's the heading quote ("thereafter," f'petesake), but I do live in this stuffy, dusty old house with etchings on the walls... 
Aside from that, I've implemented your suggestions in Edit 3 (below and prepended in the original post of this thread). I'm not absolutely sure that "escaped" is correct in S3 - we're in a sort-of subjunctive there - but it works just as well. Your suggestion of cutting the "s" from "Depreciation's" caused a cascade of changes in S2 which included cutting the list following "dust;" I think the poem's better without it, as you said. Still asking the reader to make a comparison at the beginning of S3, but at least it's a new thought instead of meter-filler.
Edit3
We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us. - Winston Churchill, 1944
A home is not a trap, a house may be:
The home may form, break - all depends upon
Each person who arrives, abides, departs,
Who loves or hates, who dies or procreates.
Each one shapes home-life - but the house endures.
The single man who buys a house invests,
Depreciation his alone to bear.
Appreciation swells his sole net worth,
But if he never marries, fails to form
A family, his house fills with the dust
Of years. So molded by its walls, he fits;
His house is comfortable, so is he.
But should he, childless, try to break its chains,
Each book, each chair and etching forms a link
That binds him, owned by all the things he’s bought.
As sad but grimmer is the fate of those
Whose family disintegrates but leaves
Their house of many years, once home, a prize
To be fought over. All its joy escaped
Like baby’s breath; too soon there’s nothing left
But walls and cellars, plumbing, attic, floors
Its former residents each claim to own.
We shape our houses, Churchill said, but then
They mold us. If the cast is too exact,
Too hard, we cannot leave until we melt -
For we’re no longer shaped to pass their doors.
Aside from that, I've implemented your suggestions in Edit 3 (below and prepended in the original post of this thread). I'm not absolutely sure that "escaped" is correct in S3 - we're in a sort-of subjunctive there - but it works just as well. Your suggestion of cutting the "s" from "Depreciation's" caused a cascade of changes in S2 which included cutting the list following "dust;" I think the poem's better without it, as you said. Still asking the reader to make a comparison at the beginning of S3, but at least it's a new thought instead of meter-filler.
Edit3
We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us. - Winston Churchill, 1944
A home is not a trap, a house may be:
The home may form, break - all depends upon
Each person who arrives, abides, departs,
Who loves or hates, who dies or procreates.
Each one shapes home-life - but the house endures.
The single man who buys a house invests,
Depreciation his alone to bear.
Appreciation swells his sole net worth,
But if he never marries, fails to form
A family, his house fills with the dust
Of years. So molded by its walls, he fits;
His house is comfortable, so is he.
But should he, childless, try to break its chains,
Each book, each chair and etching forms a link
That binds him, owned by all the things he’s bought.
As sad but grimmer is the fate of those
Whose family disintegrates but leaves
Their house of many years, once home, a prize
To be fought over. All its joy escaped
Like baby’s breath; too soon there’s nothing left
But walls and cellars, plumbing, attic, floors
Its former residents each claim to own.
We shape our houses, Churchill said, but then
They mold us. If the cast is too exact,
Too hard, we cannot leave until we melt -
For we’re no longer shaped to pass their doors.
Non-practicing atheist