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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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John Lindley

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People who live in grass houses shouldn't throw stone trolls

The hidden people are watching,
they have jaws of granite and hair of shale
and they mumble when the wind hits them.

Surely if you can believe in fire beneath ice
you can believe in them.
We are in a place, after all,
of houses, paint box bright,
with lawned roofs
and goats above the rafters.
We are in a place of hidden depths,
of bubbling beneaths,
of bases that don't support.
A place piping hot
served on two shifting plates
with an iced topping.

The mountains slope such shapes:
a curved leg here, a small breast there.
They hold no threat.
They bear no malice
'though the crater, a rusted inkwell
with its blue black lagoon
and its stillness, regards the sky
but won't reflect it.

For there is something not right here.
Sometimes in the dead of a two hour night
when the landscape is serene and not heard
we become the hidden people.
We are an eyeball at a shuttered window,
a head beneath the parapet.
We are sly watchfulness
and whispers on the morning
when the Trolls turn to stone.

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