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Against the haunting of our cats
Shy raids by children visiting, it stays
As truthful as the willow flats
Which blocked her days.
Its owner slammed the door and fled
Like Nora to the liberal hinterland.
What could resite that jostled bed?
No grown-up hand.
The miniature hoover lies
Brim-full of dust, the chest of drawers gapes;
On holidays a sobbing tries
To fluff the drapes.
And now to play at house you need
Another sort of house inside your head
Where duty states you soothe and feed
The plastic dead.
Her children have outgrown it too,
But do they hear the twisting of the key,
Entail their ruined space in lieu
Of charity?
Love, orderer of dolls and towns,
Has Lilliputianized the scale of pain,
So the wide adult eye looks down
Bereaved again
Of esperance, the childhood flush,
And has no passage into afternoons
But through diminished doors and hush
Of darkened rooms.
(From Fast Forward, 1984)