A frame set up, years later, by others. Outside of it there are voices, whispering. Empty landing, tall doors never shut, banging in any wind. The attic, its sloped tar-hair padding, muting all street sounds. On one page, attempts at painting, soaked blots, dried solid. Across the folio, words. A carpet of Daily Heralds for the blackened man to hump sacks upon through the house to the bunker at the back, in the garden. Coal dust on the doorframe, where the hood catches it. Chorusing thanks over pie-chart fractions. Crawl into the hole under the stairs where browned instructions from the Blitz still hang. Regard a patch called the Egg Field. A gold clock turns under a glass dome. A wasp pullover bobs with a ball by the airbrick. A bedroom, narrowing to this world. Chained from picture rails, oval portraits of tinted babies. Silk slung over banisters.
from 'The Given', part one of Words Out of Time, available here.
