Mistaken Identity

Someone has nailed a note to the front door
like one left for the milkman -- but it reads:
          THIS HOUSE IS DANGEROUS
                  KEEP OUT
The house's number, that I'd thought was six,
is twenty six. The two is on the ground.
All is boarded up, but none too well --
a plank has fallen, and a window, like
an eye half open, stares at me with some
malevolence --  and all the depths of ocean.
Does something far too grim for airing harbour there?
Strangest of all: the morning paper in
the front door tells, for those who care 
about these things, of shattering events 
around the world. But no one does, the paper 
goes on getting wetter in the rain.
There's no one here to care or take it in.

Three signs of life I see, and only three:
a tree is coming into leaf, a cat 
runs furtively from just behind a concrete wall
to garden rubbish bins. Precariously,
a mouse's life hangs from its teeth.

The garage doors hang crookedly
on rusted hinges to reveal
a jet black Cadillac -- with patches of
dark indigo, like someone beaten black
and blue. It might as well have been 
a hearse as adjunct to this house of death. 
But wait! A further sign of life: a nest
of robins in a smashed headlamp...

I'm imagining the Cadillac as hearse --
or maybe just another funeral car --
processing down this cobbled hill -- and who
will follow it and all the mourners shaken
up inside? The cat perhaps, the paper boy,
the refuse men and those who put the sign
in place -- and he who didn't know him: me.