(after Gaston Bachelard)
A real house has an upstairs and a downstairs—
a deserted attic and a cellar full of fears—
and though our houses may be bungalows, still the child
will find his way up to the roof and squat
there at dusk, the sky expanding everywhere beyond…
But if he stays too long, the sky
might fall upon his head, its brilliant light
driving a tap-root down into his brain, cracking open
all his thoughts, and drawing them through that
particular osmosis up into the universal—
he cannot know this is the quick
release of mind into its opening silences.
Underneath the house he finds the spiders, and those
desiccated cats that crept into the mummy
dark to die, and at times this claustrophobic space
beneath the floorboards really must
suffice, amongst the junk and concrete piles and creeping
roots of convolvulus and twitch—
where he can feel the tendrils of anxieties, twisting
upward through the thighs into his bowels.
In him, a much older man attempts to live his life
between it all, aware sometimes
of other places rising or descending in his body, though
desperate always to avoid these full
dimensions of the house.
It's 38º, a Total Fire Ban is in force
and we're lying low. This heat
is too intense, I think I need some other
way of dealing with it. Come here.
Draw that blind right down, and then
stretch yourself out on the bed
just here, my love, just here beside me.
There is always a specific flash-point …
Outside, the bush crackles, anticipating
flames that may or may not ignite
this afternoon, while in here I bend
over you, wanting you, sensing your heat
and setting back-fires in the dark
to contain the wild blaze of your body.