The Curtains

The leaves are coming down

the walls of my life

            are not more solid

I hear the leaves coming down

at night    they make the noise of footsteps

or the kisses of children

they fall like a curtain

             between the leaves

bits of a sky we try to remember

“There was in that man

had he been left unshaken by his stars

             a happy disposition”

On the other side of the curtain

the fathomless country lies about us

the farms

             sitting like loaves among the fields

the animals

            at home in their own breaths

needing no byres

           and birds never a roost

We have seen it

 we know it by heart

            men of no season

I shall build on nothing

on nothing build my house

out of the iron nail     remorselessly

hammered into the ground of this dead year

the nail    so bald  so cold

out of humiliation and the grinding feet

on nothing build my house

and when the leaves are fallen

and hammering is done

the curtains of the house will have been hung

Through which we glimpse

the place we shall inhabit

              full void     that memory

Nathaniel Tarn