Part 28 (2/2)

It felt remembered even then, an old Rightness half-imagined or foretold, As green sticks hissed and spat into the ashes And whatever rampaged out there couldn't reach us, Firelit, shuttered, slated and stone-walled.

Year after year, our game of Scrabble: love Taken for granted like any other word That was chanced on and allowed within the rules.

So 'scrabble' let it be. Intransitive.

Meaning to scratch or rake at something hard.

Which is what he hears. Our sc.r.a.ping, clinking tools.

II THE COT.

Scythe and axe and hedge-clippers, the shriek

Of the gate the children used to swing on, Poker, scuttle, tongs, a gravel rake The old activity starts up again But starts up differently. We're on our own Years later in the same locus amoenus, Tenants no longer, but in full possession Of an emptied house and whatever keeps between us.

Which must be more than keepsakes, even though The child's cot's back in place where Catherine Woke in the dawn and answered doodle doo To the rooster in the farm across the road And is the same cot I myself slept in When the whole world was a farm that eked and crowed.

V l.u.s.tRAL SONNET.

Breaking and entering: from early on

Words that thrilled me far more than they scared me Even when I'd 'come into my own'

And owned a house, a man of property Who lacked the proper outlook. I would never Double-bar the door or lock the gate Or draw the blinds or pull the curtains over Or give 'security' a second thought.

But all changed when I took possession here And had the old bed sawn on my instruction Since the only way to move it down the stair Was to cut the frame in two. A bad action, So Greek with consequence, so dangerous, Only pure words and deeds secure the house.

VII THE SKYLIGHT.

You were the one for skylights. I opposed

Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.

Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.

The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant Sky entered and held surprise wide open.

For days I felt like an inhabitant Of that house where the man sick of the palsy Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven, Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.

A Pillowed Head

Matutinal. Mother-of-pearl

Summer come early. Slashed carmines And washed milky blues.

To be first on the road, Up with the ground-mists and pheasants.

To be older and grateful That this time you too were half-grateful The pangs had begun prepared And clear-headed, foreknowing The trauma, entering on it With full consent of the will.

(The first time, dismayed and arrayed In your cut-off white cotton gown, You were more bride than earth-mother Up on the stirrup-rigged bed, Who were self-possessed now To the point of a walk on the pier Before you checked in.) And then later on I half-fainted When the little slapped palpable girl Was handed to me; but as usual Came to in two wide-open eyes That had been dawned into farther Than ever, and had outseen the last Of all of those mornings of waiting When your domed brow was one long held silence And the dawn chorus anything but.

A Royal Prospect

On the day of their excursion up the Thames

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