The Other Room

And here was the table
Laid with a casket
Knees full of woodworm
Eyes to the floorboards
Each carved hand, neighbour tight
And doused in lace and oil of camphor
Beetles ticking time to the holy clock
Two am despite its salted rusted spring
With a rough bog cotton bag over it
To stop it sounding in the dawn
Like a dainty cock

And the paint cracked ceiling
Bent with footsteps
Dislodged its mist of sullen must
Spore speckled greying seconds settled
On black armbands and hatless furrows
Icing for the peat smelling burner
The wreaths of reeds and satin black posies
On each cold tea and untouched whisky
So still was this widowed night
A psalm uttered in silver dust

And there was our father
Blind in the box room
Reached for his baby
Finds nothing but bibles
And bags of pink china
And unmended curtains
And dank string-tied bundles
Of grandmother’s letters
And then, under those
The calf skinned leger
Bairn fat and ripe with sailors
Unlocked and fell open like a worn mattress
At last year’s wedding, the autumn’s yield
And finally, the ink finding its empty field
A space for our present harvest -

The time, the day
What happened and why, and the name -
Written in his lamp black best.