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Sometimes a river seems to listen, brown water, curled white feathers, a yellow leaf turning and resting, as from time to time something catches;
your voice running round person after person, their parents, life history, my fingers turning over dead leaves, feeling how leathery they are, how easily I can tear them apart till I flash out at the next thing you say
and then a long pause while we watch foam eddy under a sycamore and detach itself, as if a counsellor has slipped out of the room and left us together.
there’ll be a house in red sandstone among green hills just gently beginning to heave and stretch.
Early morning, someone will have lit a fire, smoke will puff a wavering speech bubble across wobbling dry-stone walls, mist will blur the valleys.
At this moment a man and three women will be walking down a dim corridor towards a chapel an ancestor built out beyond the kitchens.
A car will hurry along an unseen road, a pheasant hurtle into the air over a crack where tower blocks will be thrusting up.
The four will choose well separated seats, break hesitantly into today’s psalm: How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Why don’t they look out of arched windows, take in what hills are doing nowadays, that the house is alone and alien among them?
Elusive blues, haze of splintered sunlight, no edges; no hint of rays bending off as they’re alleged to ripening grapes on an invisible hillside;
Yesterday the guide said, Sturgeon live here, ridged snouts and monstrous eyes in at most eight feet of water; no sign of them
only a bell, clear and insistent, Come and celebrate mystery, What’s the point? It’s all a trap. Out here morning sun
is drawing a cluster of masts clear and sharp against the poplars, angles of reeds, jag of boulders black smuts that shape up as swans;
and I stare at a still surface that plays me with dazzle a sudden wind can scoop up spray dense enough to drown a swimmer.
her chest-of-drawers between two windows unclear grain-lines under thick glass flimsy metal handles rattle if touched
shallow drawers jerk onto unfamiliar scents lily-of-the-valley she said but it wasn’t like flowers a powder puff loaded with pink that clogs her skin
silk stockings she slides up white legs stretches her toes down into the tips as if for someone else to see next to them her knickers her petticoats
she’s downstairs now stringy arms reddened hands poking the point of an iron into corners of pillow-cases grey hair wild across a cheek
‘Right-hand top drawer,’ she said and I’m dithering their left my right but to try both put my hand in rummage for the hanky she wants
in front of the mirror which are the true eyes those I saw her with last their backs to my shoulder-blades or doubles staring back reversed and tricky
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