Underneath the photograph
Of the old woman at her kitchen table
With a window beyond (fuchsias, a henhouse, the sea)
Are entered: her name and age, her late husband’s occupation
(A gauger), her birthplace, not here
But in another parish, near the main road.
She is sitting with tea at her elbow
And her own fairy-cakes, baked that morning
For the young man who listens now to the tape
Of her voice changing, telling the story,
And hears himself asking,
Did you ever see it yourself?
Once, I saw it.
Can you describe it? But the voice disappears
In a rising roar like a jet engine,
A tearing, a stitch of silence
Something has been lost;
The voice resumes
Quietly now:
‘The locks
Forced upward, a shift of air
Pulled over the head. The face bent
And the eyes winced, like craning
To look in the core of a furnace.
The man unravelled
Back to a snag, a dark thread.’
Then what happens?
The person disappears.
For a time he stays close by and speaks
In a child’s voice. He is not seen, and
You must leave food out for him, and be careful
Where you throw water after you wash your feet.
He’s gone, after a while.
You find this more strange than the yearly miracle
Of the loaf turning into a child?
Well, that’s natural, she says,
I often baked the bread for that myself.