stoop, as if all makers and inhabitants were small of frame
or bent over with unremitting labour and little hopes and then
possibly enter a darkness before you find the light switch
with your left hand half slapping, half stroking the white wall,
your nose picking up the familiar but longlost scent of the place,
instant, distinctive, rising up from stone walls and old wood,
the years of coal smoke from backdraughts, and something
else, seeping in from wind that blows over heather and grass,
bracken and stone, with rain, snow and sun...over in the dimness
you see the cupboard that held the jigsaws and board games,
their cardboard boxes all frayed and worn along their edges,
and the looping shape of the black inner tube from a tractor
tyre; cold floors of uncovered grey flags...it's children's voices
you hear your own among them and see the silhouette of a sitting cat
in the big window that gives out upon the daleside the light now
undiminished and with it the joy of running chest-high in the
bracken on the hill behind and building dams in the stream
way up, past the clumps of foxgloves, beyond the pinetree
split by ancient lightning...