<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Further extracts from<\/em><\/p>\n The Old Man in the House of Bone<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s someone else in the house of bone, someone<\/p>\n moving in between the silences, slipping through<\/p>\n and around them, stepping over them on tiptoe, trying<\/p>\n not to wake them, someone in some other room<\/p>\n rummaging through the boxes, emptying the cupboards<\/p>\n scattering their contents across the floor<\/p>\n as if searching for something. The old man listens<\/p>\n at the door, afraid to go in, he goes in, there\u2019s no one there<\/p>\n the room\u2019s empty, it\u2019s undisturbed, just as he left it a lifetime ago<\/p>\n but there\u2019s the creak of a floorboard behind him<\/p>\n Who\u2019s there? there\u2019s a shadow at the top of the stairs<\/p>\n Who is it? he feels a hand squeezing his heart<\/p>\n a mouth pressed against his sucking his breath<\/p>\n there are fingers lifting the edges of his face, peeling<\/p>\n them back to look underneath, Who is it? Who\u2019s there?<\/p>\n the old man wants to hide under the bedclothes, he hides<\/p>\n under the bedclothes, Who\u2019s there? Who is it? Who is it?<\/p>\n Who\u2019s there? the house of bone puts its finger to its lips<\/p>\n says nothing, it\u2019s keeping its secret to itself.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Let the house of bone be a leaf<\/p>\n clinging to the last branch of the last tree<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n The old man is making a model of the house of bone<\/p>\n using anything he can lay his hands on, old odds and ends<\/p>\n scraps of things found down the sides of the chair, under the settee<\/p>\n at the back of the cupboard, bits and pieces of his life<\/p>\n which is made up itself of the bits and pieces<\/p>\n of other people\u2019s lives, those he may have known once<\/p>\n those passed in the street, vaguely familiar, or complete strangers<\/p>\n all their leftovers and scrapings of themselves<\/p>\n he gathers them in a heap in the middle of the room<\/p>\n and sticks them together, using the glue from his own<\/p>\n melted fleshpile, making a perfect miniature<\/p>\n of the house of bone, which he lifts and places on the table<\/p>\n and switches on the lamp, and peers in<\/p>\n through a small window, where a lamp is lit<\/p>\n and an old man\u2019s standing, peering in through a small window<\/p>\n he goes to his own window, he looks out and up in horror<\/p>\n at the face looking out and down at him in horror.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Let the house of bone be a magic mirror<\/p>\n where the world is slowly disappearing<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Listen, the house of bone is talking to itself<\/p>\n mumbling something, charms and incantations, maybe<\/p>\n fragments of old fairy tales, and the old man\u2019s trying to overhear<\/p>\n straining to catch the drift of those gummy mutterings<\/p>\n but he can\u2019t make it out, his ears are stuffed with dirty rags<\/p>\n everything comes through muffled, and meanwhile<\/p>\n the house of bone goes on talking, as if speaking words<\/p>\n of a dead language, some ancient epic, maybe<\/p>\n or a shopping list, or the secret of the universe.<\/p>\n The old man knows he\u2019s missing something, he feels<\/p>\n the absence of it, like someone\u2019s just walked out of the room<\/p>\n taking half his brain with them, and he listens harder<\/p>\n he shuts his eyes down on himself, he clamps himself fast<\/p>\n to the roots of his ears, he does all the fine tuning, and at last<\/p>\n he hears it, it comes through loud and clear, the dull drone<\/p>\n of his own voice repeating the same meaningless phrase.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Let the house of bone be a stone on the ridgetop<\/p>\n shaped by the wind to the shape of the wind<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Calcutt<\/strong> is Writer in Residence at Caldmore Community Garden<\/a>.\u00a0 And author of Crowboy, Shadow Bringer and The Map of Marvels:\u00a0Oxford University\u00a0Press, and Robin Hood: Barefoot Books http:\/\/davidcalcutt.com\/about\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Further extracts from The Old Man in the House of Bone There\u2019s someone else in the house of bone, someone moving in between the silences, slipping through and around them, stepping over them on tiptoe, trying not to wake them, someone in some other room rummaging through the boxes, emptying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[139,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23790,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8796\/revisions\/23790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}