We had left that place, even our shadows,
and there’s nothing to say of it.
A house not to be lived in again,
not to be dwelling-place,
our memory’s house comes down
where trees hold up their heads
logging up summers, good years and bad.
That house is a lung breathing out,
Nothing of ours, not a sweat-bead,
whatever a man might have touched
or his hand rested. Odour of absences,
ants track in our rain-quickened speech.
Ours is the quiet of an animal sleeping,
the light far into woods,
the musk of the rainforests,
buried kingdoms of wood