By Estill Pollock
From chaos, a season—within it
a house we pace corner to
corner, fingers pried from flags, the corner-patch damp
of this nostalgia
Where the house is, there is space for a house, perfect
house-shaped space, yet how can one stay
uninvited
Long lines shift silently
Moving or motionless, some carry scrolls, others
numbers scratched on bones
They say, If these were
gifts they would be yours, or they say
These are our gifts
Everyone everywhere arrives
They are waiting in the garden, and the hallway
is full of waiting
A catch-breath sound
of hinges, the door opening, the door closing
A circumspection precedes this—billion cubic tons of planet
rolling towards a jonquil dawn, feather-ruffs of cloud
so tranquil
Imagine the world
is turning, that it stands in a sky that does not
end, that curves forever, a pulse
These are our gifts
§
Bell-blooms of comfrey, the lawn
immaculate, a green
of a startled season’s green, anticipating
the sparrow’s leafy witter
This drowsy precognition, through
invisible territories each decibel of birdsong tags, a rummage
of memories revived—why
so vague, so uncertain
These things are practised as an etiquette
is practised—a bright cutlery
on fresh linen, in an old house inhabited now
by the apprenticed sane, soliloquies oblivious
to the protocol
of forks and the knife’s domain
A sense of elegance is all
that remains of the old address
We cannot tell plates from tumbling birds, the whites
of flowers folding like lawn chairs
What is to be done
Positions
of utter calm exchanged for a meticulous
subversion, each face clouds, sullen—the spit
of language, defiant
servant climate
§
Shifting rhythms, some passion, all
one expects, all the usual—still, a strangeness
in this determination to live
where ghosts are big-booted
and the floorboards ring
This house is brick and sky, wayward
leaning clutch-straw courses, and time
what we made it—an imagination
of leaves, a childhood of leaves, the sunbursts
so neatly raked, the wicker and the smoky damp
from wet leaves smouldering
Who has sent us, alone to this task, from a house
no longer standing
Slow drag of rake tines tidies sluttish maples
And then the years
As if this memory was ours, as if the spark
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