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Grevel Lindop

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The Landlord

The landlord turns in his sleep, hearing a footfall
somewhere on a stair,
deep in the spiralled hollows of his ear.
His heart returns like a pendulum in the dark.

Mentally, mentally he inspects the attic:
his dreams are hung like dustsheets on a chair,
his keys are hanging on a nail,
the dust hangs in the air.
Nobody has been trespassing there.

All’s well. He considers now the cupboards,
makes inventory of small things
of which only he is aware:
electric plugs, a dusty sponge, a hundred newspapers —
the carefully-hoarded tokens of despair.

Each in its place. His inward eye
returns to rest. But we must move carefully,
avoid the creaking boards, speak in a whisper,
not to disturb this ghost who dreams the house.

I imagine him sleeping up there, making his bed
perhaps in a trunk or a clock-case,
where agile mice play havoc with his moustache
around the snoring caverns of his nostrils.

Don’t laugh, don’t make a sound; or he might wake,
shake off his dream, send the floorboards tilting,
the windows crashing, the cellars caving under him,
and shake us too awake, to find our selves
without shelter and free on the cold ground.

 

Page(s) 33

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