SOUTH
In this house there is a room
full of underwater shadows, of
teenage fears;
the room has close-drawn curtains,
dim light;
a trail of make-up, lipsticks,
earrings,
silky scarves and tiny, tiny
briefs;
a strange flirtation with form and
beauty
in the stark, dark postcards,
black and white,
flowers, postered art;
a deep obsession with clothes,
self-presentation -
self-identity carried to the
mystic ritual
of mirror-worship, conditioner,
blusher, brushes
striving for an outward beauty,
but glimpsing now and then an
inner need
for wisdom and strange new
priorities
of selfless discipline;
a sad putting away of childhood,
the pillowed bears, confiding
hedgehogs,
banished with a too sudden haste,
the popstar posters ripped away,
the money growing slowly in a pot
for him,
deep-eyed in a dozen photo-ed
moments;
an integrity that takes on
loneliness
and pays the price for dreaming of
the south.
WEST
In this house there is a room
with tumbled bed and wide,
obsessive window
open to the rain and sun;
with huge tangled boots and
trainers,
wires and headphones nesting in
damp towels, hair gel;
all around are girlie posters,
matches, plots and scraps, phone
numbers,
humming socks torn off to land in
chaos;
tapes, more tapes - everywhere;
car keys impossibly festooned in
tags, rally posters,
a grease-streaked scarlet rug;
beer cans and a photo of a
leaping, laughing dog;
ripped shirts and bills -
more bills and worried invoice
slips;
an open, empty cash box but an
open, generous heart;
no yesterdays and no tomorrows,
only today
viewed from ever-hopeful eyes -
unquenchable,
a clear Irish blue. Western.
EAST
In this house there is a room
wide-windowed to the garden,
peopled by an army of unperturbing
beetles,
spiders, harvesters, and the chrysallis
shells
of asthma-beating drugs;
scrolls of music and a Japanese
recorder;
tiny terracotta models,
doll-sized, of pitchers, pots,
in warm Mediterranean earth;
clay birds in flight and two blue
horses;
photos of fragile kittens,
crippled geese, black children;
posters of a dying soldier and a
begging child;
medals, sports cups, a baseball
cap;
a few closed books;
drawers of jewelry shut for ever,
skirts rejected, perfume long since
put aside;
a night owl, prisoned in glass,
watches the empty bed,
uncommunicative -
the child has flown east.
NORTH
In this house there is a room,
a room of sky and leaves,
looking over fields and hills,
austere, cold, secret,
reached only by a thin, oak
ladder.
The room is filled with books;
a sleeping trumpet, amber dubbin,
scraps of pottery, elephants and
foreign masks,
shards of glass and silica, a
sheep’s skull
jostle with stark sketches of
gaunt trees -
and an odd incongruous nativity
on wood, tiny,
hanging from the elm beam of a
stable -
the child now star-led to the
north.
(November,
1991 to March, 1992)
