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The city had such pretty clotheslines. Women aired their intimate apparel in the emery haze: membranes of lingerie— pearl, ruby, copper slips— their somehow intestinal quivering in the wind. And Freihofer’s spread the chaste, apron scent of baking, a sensual net over a few yards of North Troy. The city had Niagara Mohawk bearing down with power and light and members of the Local shifting on the line. They worked on fabrics made from wood and acid, synthetics that won’t vent. They pieced the tropics into housecoats when big prints were the rage. Dacron gardens twisted on the line over lots of Queen Anne’s lace. Sackdresses dyed the sun as sun passed through, making a brash stained glass against the leading of the tenements, the warehouse holding medical supplies. I waited for my bus by that window of trusses in Caucasian beige, trying to forget the pathological inside. I was thinking of being alive. I was waiting to open the amber envelopes of mail at home. Just as food service workers, counter women, maybe my Aunt Fran, waited to undo their perms from the delicate insect meshes required by The Board of Health. Aunt Alice wasn’t on this route. She made brushes and plastics at Tek Hughes— milk crates of orange industrial lace the cartons could drip through. Once we boarded, the girls from Behr-Manning put their veins up and sawed their nails to dust on files from the plant. All day, they made abrasives. Garnet paper. Yes, and rags covered with crushed gems called garnet cloth. It was dusk—when aunts and mothers formed their larval curls and wrapped their heads in thick brown webs. It was yesterday—twenty years after my father’s death, I found something he had kept. A packet of lightning- cut sanding discs, still sealed. I guess he meant to open the finish, strip the paint stalled on some grain and groom the primal gold. The discs are the rough size of those cookies the franchises call Homestyle and label Best Before. The old cellophane was tough. But I ripped until I touched their harsh done crust.

One afternoon of summer rain my hand skimmed a shelf and I found an old florin. Ireland, 1950. We say like or as and the world is a fish minted in silver and alloy, an outing for all the children, an evening in the Sandford cinema, a paper cone of lemonade crystals and say it again so we can see androgyny of angels, edges to a circle, the way the body works against the possible— and no one to tell us, now or ever, why it ends, why it always ends. I am holding two whole shillings of nothing, observing its heaviness, its uselessness. And how in the cool shadow of nowhere a salmon leaps up to find a weir it could not even know was never there.

“The chambers of the sun, that now From ancient melody have ceased.” The doorways of the Sun were closed; Its muted bells gave forth no sound. But while the windy prophets dozed A child a little crevice found. He pulled with one small straining hand; The massy door moved willingly. And he has wakened all the band Of singers—they rise eagerly. Let now again the hinges move In sweetly clanging melody; Unseat the dark blind from the groove; Unleash the struggling harmony. The golden doors are opening To ancient sounds of loveliness; The Sons of Light are issuing, Winged with their antique mightiness. Who can sing the House of the Sun? Who shall frame its dreadful art? His childhood never must be done! And he must have a wondering heart! Burn all the manuscripts of shame! Break every lute of brazen string! Utter, O living tongues, the flame! Up, Dust, into the Sun, and sing!

And fleetingly it seemed to him That in between one eye blink and the next Time paused, allowing time to be installed Within that countless interim, Coiled up, on hold, A memory predicted and recalled. Now, that weak muscle flexed, All that contained him started to unfold In front of him, a moving book In three dimensions he could wander through, At will, at any point, now, since, before, To feel, to listen and to look— A house, or suite Of rooms around a circling corridor, And waiting there, he knew, Were all the peopled days he’d not repeat. Slowly he stretched his hand to open The first door on his right. Why, this was easy: Christmas when he was seven, and his aunt Playing a polonaise by Chopin, Badly. “Lenore, We know you think you can, dear, but you can’t.” And he was resting, queasy From too much pudding. Now, another door: So far, so faint, not yet an I, A pulse of sense, he hung upon a web Of knitted blood. Above, the muffled heart Performed its mindless lullaby And in the womb He slept on half awake. That was his part Elsewhere, too, at the ebb Of his last consciousness. Another room: He recognized at once the face Of one who five years hence he would have bound As closely to him as a Siamese twin. How recklessly he would replace That loving care. Absorbed, now, in the dream of skin on skin, He whispered the profound And destined promises she’d never share. He shuddered, shut it, and proceeded. So room on room, all of his scenes, arranged In simultaneous succession, played Before him, unignored, unheeded, Each a tableau Vivant and drama, driven and yet stayed, Developing, unchanged. At last the time that paused for time to flow He saw was coming to an end. He saw himself before himself, distinct As when—a life ago—it came to him A single blink could comprehend, And then unfold, All time within that countless interim. He blinked. And then he blinked. And time continued as it coiled, on hold.

It's the ragged source of memory, a tarpaper-shingled bungalow whose floors tilt toward the porch, whose back yard ends abruptly in a weedy ravine. Nothing special: a chain of three bedrooms and a long side porch turned parlor where my great-grandfather, Pomp, smoked every evening over the news, a long sunny kitchen where Annie, his wife, measured cornmeal dreaming through the window across the ravine and up to Shelby Hill where she had borne their spirited, high-yellow brood. In the middle bedroom's hard, high antique double bed the ghost of Aunt Jane, the laundress who bought the house in 1872, though I call with all my voices, does not appear. Nor does Pomp's ghost, with whom one of my cousins believes she once had a long and intimate unspoken midnight talk. He told her, though they'd never met, that he loved her; promised her raw widowhood would heal without leaving a scar. The conveniences in an enclosed corner of the slant-floored back side porch were the first indoor plumbing in town. Aunt Jane put them in, incurring the wrath of the woman who lived in the big house next door. Aunt Jane left the house to Annie, whose mother she had known as a slave on the plantation, so Annie and Pomp could move their children into town, down off Shelby Hill. My grandmother, her brother, and five sisters watched their faces change slowly in the oval mirror on the wall outside the door into teachers' faces, golden with respect. Here Geneva, the randy sister, damned their colleges, daubing her quicksilver breasts with gifts of perfume. As much as love, as much as a visit to the grave of a known ancestor, the homeplace moves me not to silence but to righteous, praise Jesus song: Oh, catfish and turnip greens, hot-water cornbread and grits. Oh, musty, much-underlined Bibles; generations lost to be found, to be found.

They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say. Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill: They are all gone away. Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing more to say. Why is it then we stray Around the sunken sill? They are all gone away, And our poor fancy-play For them is wasted skill: There is nothing more to say. There is ruin and decay In the House on the Hill: They are all gone away, There is nothing more to say.

If you have a house you must think about it all the time as you reside in the house so it must be a home in your mind you must ask yourself (wherever you are) have I closed the front door and the back door is often forgotten not against thieves necessarily but the wind   oh   if it blows either door open   then the heat the heat you’ve carefully nurtured with layers of dry hardwood and a couple of opposing green brought in to slow the fire as well as the little pilot light in the convenient gas backup all of that care will be mocked because you have not kept the house on your mind but these may actually be among the smallest concerns   for instance the house could be settling   you may notice the thin slanting line of light above the doors   you have to think about that luckily you have been paying attention the house’s dryness can be humidified with vaporizers in each room and pots of water on the woodstove   should you leave for the movies after dinner   ask yourself have I turned down the thermometer and moved all wood paper away from the stove the fiery result of excited distraction could be too horrible to describe now we should talk especially to Northerners of the freezing of the pipe   this can often be prevented by pumping water continuously through the baseboard heating system allowing the faucet to drip drip continuously day and night   you must think about the drains separately   in fact you should have established their essential contribution to the ordinary kitchen and toilet life of the house digging these drains deep into warm earth if it hasn’t snowed by mid-December you must cover them with hay   sometimes rugs and blankets have been used   do not be troubled by their monetary value as this is a regionally appreciated emergency you may tell your friends to consider your house as their own   that is if they do not wear outdoor shoes when thumping across the gleam of their poly- urethaned floors they must bring socks or slippers to your house as well   you must think of your house when you’re in it and when you’re visiting the superior cabinets and closets of others   when you approach your house in the late afternoon in any weather   green or white   you will catch sight first of its new aluminum snow-resistant roof and the reflections in the cracked windows its need in the last twenty-five years for paint which has created a lovely design in russet pink and brown   the colors of un- intentioned neglect   you must admire the way it does not (because of someone’s excellent decision sixty years ago) stand on the high ridge deforming the green profile of the hill but rests in the modesty of late middle age under the brow of the hill with its back to the dark hemlock forest looking steadily out for miles toward the cloud refiguring meadows and mountains of the next state   coming up the road by foot or auto the house can be addressed personally House!   in the excitement of work and travel to other people’s houses with their interesting improvements we thought of you often and spoke of your coziness in winter   your courage in wind and fire   your small airy rooms in humid summer   how you nestle in spring into the leaves and flowers of the hawthorn and the sage green leaves of the Russian olive tree   House!   you were not forgotten

the first trees were felled and sailed in, wrecked, then slept an age in the northern sun, blackening to iron                    were found by horsemen leading their horses and raised as cloud’s axles, rafters of night, a god’s gates were passed through, seen from miles off, rolled the sun and moon along their lintels, rooted, put out leaves                     for a second time creaked, tasted the rain, held the wind to their hearts while the horsemen streamed like their horses’ manes into the dark, their fires black smudge in the subsoil, their bridles of gold underground lived long, grew great were a second time felled, dressed                   were sharpened to stakes and raised as a fort by farmers who’d followed their ploughs to the treeline for fuel to bake the pots their ashes were buried in with a scattering of grain like stars                 each small clay heaven still hangs in the earth were overgrown, steered clear of called dragon’s ribs devil’s cot                 were nested among, rotted down beside harbored foxglove, eggshell owl pellet, primrose, honeycomb were glazed, split put out buds of malachite, blossoms of salt, grew again, put out small translucent fruits named by the women who prized them teardrops, ice apples, clarities were offered bread, dolls of woven grass, plaits of hair, coins with the obverse ground smooth, beads of  turquoise twisted, straightened, filled with rooks, held again the wind to their hearts, creaked, scraped off the sunlight’s scales with their leaves, were a grove, grew manes of lichen, were murmured under, gave counsel on still nights of open doorways the dead came through on horseback or shouldering flails or bearing chimes of ice apples                       gave shelter were felled for it, their roots ripped up by a legion’s engineers and left like brainstems rucked on the earth were timber but the pit saws snarled in their rings of iron broke teeth on the flints that welted their sapwood were good for nothing, stacked, fired, marched away from, sucked up the flames, hissed, smoked, glowed blood- black, were tempered, twice- forged                     bided on site as battle-stain, in story as Head Wood lay half-buried, grown over, still hot were stumbled upon by navigators, hit with hammers and rang until they were made lock gates to slam shut on the slow wet grew green, slime- faced, knew runoff, weird particulates, held fast against drizzle’s tonnage, the nudge and bonk of a bloater        were left stinking when the water died stood strange in currents of deep grass, open wide flexed, hungered once more for the light, bulged, branched, rived out of their lacquer, unfurled leaves of oilskin, shook down clots of blossom            lived long, grew great weren’t felled but walled in, roofed over, giving span to a farmhouse, hanging a hall from their outstretch, bracing floor after floor on their inosculating joists, which sang to a barefoot tread and were called home of shadows             heart of the wind Lamanby

i

A Night Piece (July, 1863) No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such As tawny tigers feel in matted shades, Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage. Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by. Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf Of muffled sound, the atheist roar of riot. Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there. The town is taken by its rats—ship-rats And rats of the wharves. All civil charms And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe— Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve, And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature. Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead, And ponderous drag that shakes the wall. Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll Of black artillery; he comes, though late; In code corroborating Calvin’s creed And cynic tyrannies of honest kings; He comes, nor parlies; and the Town, redeemed, Gives thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds The grimy slur on the Republic’s faith implied, Which holds that Man is naturally good, And—more—is Nature’s Roman, never to be scourged.