Clearance
Airtight.
No sound.
No Is that you?
above the TV
turned up too loud.
No feeble getting up
to proffer hand or kiss.
No shuffling
round the assembly-kit
of treasured things
that made a home.
No ghosts
of chirpy whistling days
with windows that breathed,
seasons strolling in for a chat,
grubby knees at open doors,
laughter scampering
up and down the stairs.
No fidgeting between naps,
no turning a blurred gaze
from the incomprehensible street
to cross-examine the other chair.
No sobbing into the night.
Interminable night,
fingering things,
like a dealer,
leaving a smell.
.
This has some great lines. In particular, all of the first four stanzas, in my opinion, are really good. In the fifth, I feel a bit confused, i.e., how the blurred gaze, incomprehensible street work and then who would be not cross-examining who from the chair?
Rachel 🙂
The blurred gaze comes with old age. You’re lucky if your eyesight stays good. The house in the poem is being emptied. There is no more staring at the incomprehensible street because the person who used to stare out of the window trying to understand the world outside is dead. The habit a bereaved person might have had of cross-examining the departed spouse’s empty chair is not happening anymore because both people are dead, the one before the other. Hence the clearance. No? A bit grim, what?
Thanks for reading and commenting, Rachael.
Gerald
Boy did this hit a nerve with me: beautifully expressed without being overly sentimental.
I would like to nominate this, not because it hit that nerve but because you have caught the atmosphere, the loss of a shared partnership between the house, the past and the love held in those walls perfectly. Sue.
Many thanks, Sue. This is one of a couple of poems about my mother’s last years after my father died. Thanks for nominating it.
Gerald