As the flames go wandering over your rough-rubbed walls, old
house,
I think to ask you, watchman, what of the night?
As smoke stings here my eyes, the dog shifts here his head,
Watchman, what of the passing?
Two hundred years.
You were here, here,
And you hugged them all to your heart.
You stood four-square to the wind
And the pain;
And beneath your shelter
Shrivelled apples, spiced and small, slept still in winter
sleep;
Brave torching squeezed beneath the roof-tree, damp,
But keeping out the cold;
Baking bread smelt sweet;
Smoked rafters hung in shadows;
Iron nails clung deep;
And burning scars ached in the ingle beam;
Forgotten fires then whispered in the chimneyed dark,
Illness prowled and waited, watching each black kettle
Toil upstairs;
The small brass parrot on the bedroom door hung quiet,
Worn:
Watching birth and watching death,
Midwife, parson, water, wine, stagger up
Or down.
The elm boards, patched with lead, creak in the dark
And settle
Under every coffin, every sleeping cradle.
Watchman, what of the night?
(June,
1978)
