The Old Man in the House of Bone
He sits in his house in the dark wood
in the house of bone in the dark, tangled wood
at the wood’s centre where no paths lead
where all the paths have been erased or grown over
so that no one knows the way to the house of bone
they can’t get in, and he can’t get out
because the way is lost, it never existed
and the forgotten birds scutter among leaves of silence
and the roots of silence have burrowed down into his brain
have pushed their long fingers into his blood
are picking at his entrails, sorting through his belongings
emptying him out like a cardboard box
a ghost in its grave, a last gasp
pinning him down to the house of bone
crumbling under its weight of silences.
*
Let the house of bone be a church
where you kneel and pray to nothing
*
In the house of bone, numbers are gathering
in the cobwebs behind the old man’s eyes
a mass of them, a black clutch, scuttling in the attic corners
hanging by threads which they unravel out of themselves
and he hears the scratch and whisper of their feet
like a Morse signal from somewhere far off
like static from some long-ago burnt-out radio
that he can’t quite interpret
and when they crawl out from his finger-ends
to tap a code on the armchair, they become
strings of numbers tying themselves into a knot
they hang themselves from the curtains
they flutter around the lampshade
and he can’t count them, he can’t add them up
they dissolve into dust, into the moon’s zero light
leaving only the blank on the face of the house of bone.
*
Let the house of bone be a shoe
lying in the middle of a rain-soaked field
*
No one comes calling at the house of bone
there are no foot-shuffles on the front step
no yoo-hoos through the letterbox
or if they do come calling they come as shades
escaped from hell through the trapdoor in the cellar
wrinklings of light and smoky silences
that twist their way in under the door
to float like mote-dust, like flies around the fruit-bowl
and the old man thinks he might just recognise a face
or the echo of a gesture, or the shape of a voice
but even as he reaches out to touch it it vanishes
and he has only his own feet to look at
his glasses case, his empty cup, his own hands
lying crumpled anyhow on the table, like unopened letters
each one labelled with the wrong address.
*
Let the house of bone be a needle
slowly threading its way through to the heart
*
David Calcutt is author of Crowboy, Shadow Bringer and The Map of Marvels: Oxford University Press and Robin Hood: Barefoot Books. Find out more here: http://davidcalcutt.com/about/