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Susan Wicks

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Emma Kirkby; Mozart

This is how we prettify a house
after death, the black runnels
of grease that shadow each light-switch
wiped away, the three-pin faces
losing their crusted halo
to a smear - finally
letting the white through.
I erase black footprints
from a threshold, brown cataracts of tar
from birches, sky, that empty bathtub
abandoned in grass. Slowly
a world takes shape, the walking-aids
sent back to Monklands, books
to a man in Paisley, a few sticks
sold for a hundred and sixty
to a place in Moss End.
Upstairs you’re sorting papers,
your hands blistered and swelling
as you sift through years of silence
and words. This is what it smells like -
reeled in a sewing-basket, trapped
between curtains, under an envelope’s
bent flap. And we go on
with our lives, my aching back
pressed to a chest-freezer
of long-past-sell-by-date fish-fingers
and a voice that runs like water
or time over every surface,
freeing the hardened crumbs
so gently, no need for anything
more than a lullaby to loosen
this residue of nicotine and grease
and Safeway Surface Wipe.
My dear life, sweetly sleep.

 

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