MAKING ROOM FOR THE PAST

These rooms had had another purpose then.
A one-time family home, no doors were locked
and children screamed or laughed, woke in a sweat
from nightmares in a mother's arms, laughed wet
with pistol spray. And here she'd nightly rocked
her eldest, Angie, and her youngest, Ben.

First widowed, then by slow degrees bereft
of fledgeling son and daughter, Mrs Lea
made do by renting out her rooms to men.
A note pinned in the hall said how and when
her tenants should behave: BY NINE TV
MUST BE TURNED OFF, ALL VISITORS HAVE LEFT,

NO PETS, NO SMOKING IN THE BEDROOMS. She
looked just the part in aprons stiff and white,
a duster in one hand, the other tucked
upon a hip. Her sallow cheeks once sucked
in prudent disapproval of a light
left burning in the hall. 'You must agree,'

she said to Back-Room straight, 'you should have turned
it off. Your mother surely taught you rules
of household economics?' Mute, he smiled
and locked the door behind him: her heart wild,
it palpitated, and she asked what schools
were teaching nowadays, what pupils learned.

Alone, her ten-watt smile was always off:
her duty was to make ends meet and not
indulge herself in wasteful warmth. Each day
she undid Front-Room's lock and made the bay
to throw the window wide. The fug had got
her wheezing badly: she'd begin to cough.

And then one afternoon while cleaning out
the just-in-case ashtray, she saw the crack
her son had made there. Then her nose denied
the smell of smoke. Remembering him, she cried,
trying to call those comic trousers back,
hands in first pockets, toddler's angry shout.

The memory looked up and answered now:
'If you arg-me, why shouldn't I arg-you?'
Upon the floor the ashtray'd stopped its spin.
He'd dared her with his words; he'd squared his chin,
defied the adult law, his logic new,
unanswerable, gaze bright, unwrinkled brow.





Eyes focused on forbidden ash, she knew
that forty years had passed, precisely timed,
and over seven thousand wipes were dead
as burnt tobacco leaves. She reached the bed
where she'd conceived her children; her hands mimed
old plucks, caresses best forgotten, dew

and tingles in Tom's arms. She wiped a shelf
where once a box had held a rubber snout.
Time quite unzipped its bag, and Angie there
was bumping down the stairs, her bottom bare,
her only dress a gas mask. "Turn about
and put your nightie on! Go dress yourself!"

The old landlady gathered up soiled sheets,
went creaking down the stairs. Back-Room gave tongue
with Dolby plenitude. Her fingertips
had choked the bannister's pine neck; her lips
were trembling, Angie's spirit killed by lung
of hell, guitars that shrieked, a bass's bleats.

She knocked upon the screaming door. Back-Room
was deaf: she tried the knob, but it was fixed.
Awhile she trembled up against the door,
her feet wide-set upon a seismic floor,
then turned, descending yet again, transfixed.
And now she jabbed the ceiling with a broom.

Soon Angie, Benjamin and Tom became
mere facts derived from someone else's mind,
her life a semi with locked doors and ghosts
that did not haunt it any more, mileposts
to nowhere, all her life embalmed behind,
with only tenants left, each day the same