Host
Put his soul or whatever you call it
Into making the house a home.
Admire how he may have gone about it,
Such sacrificial fervour
After the long darkness,
That dispensation of fiends.
The spread of himself sweetly outwards,
Emollients born of some wounded place
Due west of here, a hinterland
Smashed and abandoned, they say, a hell.
There is blood on his threshold:
You can see it, also smell it
In its envelope of tired sweat.
Sweat meets you at the door, bids you welcome,
Escorts you fondly a little way.
Kettles sing in the middle distance.
There are bloody steps in the hall
Too, which do not mistake for paint,
For he does not paint, our host, preferring
The bare shells of things, light
In the bare shells of things, light
That stands and gathers commendingly,
That is grave, ecumenical.
You do not ever quite see him, though,
Even in those inner spaces
Where the air softens, in joy at itself.
He is in his handiwork however,
Somewhere in the light as it shifts at noon,
Creeps down the long hall towards us.
Puts his soul or whatever you call it
Into the closing of doors even,
A softness which does not shut you out.
Page(s) 36-37
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