Chapter III: Part I: The House

BEDROOM

The clump of jessamine
Softly beneath the rain
Rocks its golden flowers.

In this room my father died:
His bed is in the corner.
No one has slept in it
Since the morning when he wakened
To meet death's hands at his heart.
I cannot go to this room,
Without feeling something big and angry
Waiting for me
To throw me on the bed,
And press its thumbs in my throat.

The clump of jessamine
Without, beneath the rain,
Rocks its golden flowers.

LIBRARY

Stuffy smell of mouldering leather,
Tattered arm-chairs, creaking doors,
Books that slovenly elbow each other,
Sown with children's scrawls and long
Worn out by contact with generations:
Tattered tramps displaying yourselves--
"We, though you broke our backs, did not complain."
If I had my way,
I would take you out and bury you quickly,
Or give you to the clean fire.

INDIAN SKULL

Some one dug this up and brought it
To our house.
In the dark upper hall, I see it dimly,
Looking at me through the glass.

Where dancers have danced, and weary people
Have crept to their bedrooms in the morning,
Where sick people have tossed all night,
Where children have been born,
Where feet have gone up and down,
Where anger has blazed forth, and strange looks have passed,
It has rested, watching meanwhile
The opening and shutting of doors,
The coming and going of people,
The carrying out of coffins.

Earth still clings to its eye-sockets,
It will wait, till its vengeance is accomplished.

OLD NURSERY

In the tired face of the mirror
There is a blue curtain reflected.
If I could lift the reflection,
Peer a little beyond, I would see
A boy crying
Because his sister is ill in another room
And he has no one to play with:
A boy listlessly scattering building blocks,
And crying,
Because no one will build for him the palace of Fairy Morgana.
I cannot lift the curtain:
It is stiff and frozen.

THE BACK STAIRS

In the afternoon
When no one is in the house,
I suddenly hear dull dragging feet
Go fumbling down those dark back stairs,
That climb up twisting,
As if they wanted no one to see them.
Beating a dirge upon the bare planks
I hear those feet and the creak of a long-locked door.

My mother often went
Up and down those selfsame stairs,
From the room where by the window
She would sit all day and listlessly
Look on the world that had destroyed her,
She would go down in the evening
To the room where she would sleep,
Or rather, not sleep, but all night
Lie staring fiercely at the ceiling.

In the afternoon
When no one is in the house:
I suddenly hear dull dragging feet
Beating out their futile tune,
Up and down those dark back stairs,
But there is no one in the shadows.

THE WALL CABINET

Above the steep back stairs
So high that only a ladder can come to it,
There is a wall cabinet hidden away.

No one ever unlocks it;
The key is lost, the door is barred,
It is shut and still.

Some say, a previous tenant
Filled its shelves with rows of bottles,
Bottles of spirit, filled with spiders.

I do not know.
Above the sleepy still back stairs,
It watches, shut and still.

THE CELLAR

Faintly lit by a high-barred grating,
The low-hung cellar,
Flattens itself under the house.

In one corner
There is a little door,
So low, it can scarcely be seen.

Beyond,
There is a narrow room,
One must feel for the walls in the dark.

One shrinks to go
To the end of it,
Feeling the smooth cold wall.

Why did the builders who made this house,
Stow one room away like this?

THE FRONT DOOR

It was always the place where our farewells were taken,
When we travelled to the north.

I remember there was one who made some journey,
But did not come back.
Many years they waited for him,
At last the one who wished the most to see him,
Was carried out of this selfsame door in death.

Since then all our family partings
Have been at another door.