DUSTSCEWUNG
( the contemplation of the dust )


She gazes at the house
that isn't there.

Sees so clearly
the house it was

that is
no more.

Only the doorway
incongruous as it seems

remains.

Open to
the elements.

Sea and mountain
peeping through.

A door that leads
to nowhere.

Only an horizon
and a sea shining

a boat sailing to
a somewhere.

Small birds enter
without knocking

flit through and
flit back

mocking such
former human habitation.

It was as if a giant hand
had wrenched the roof off

thrown it to the dazzle
of the waves

peeled off each wall
one by one

revealing a block of silence
a frozen past

that slowly dissolves
becomes what once it was.

Here where I slept
a sheep grazes the bedroom

a dog defecates
in the living room

a swallow flies
through my dead sister's eyes

a cat prowls
through my mother's ghost.

She climbs the stair
that leaves her stranded

upon a cloud
and that cloud moving on

she stands still
in mid air.

It's all there
but it isn't.

A transistor radio
blares from the past.

Larry Gogan's voice
proclaiming the newest pop hit.

Charles Mitchell announcing "And here
is the news!"

She turns her face away
so the house won't see her crying

"Dustsewung!"
she repeats to herself

remembering her Anglo-Saxon
poetry module.

Translating it for the geese
who may not know just what it is.

She writes in crimson nail varnish
that half remembered fragment of Hulme

"Old houses were scaffolding once
And workmen whistling.

The past receding
in the car mirror.

*

An archaic English word, Dustscewung directly translates to “a Contemplation of what has been lost & the transience of things”


Old houses were scaffolding once
And workmen whistling

T.E. Hulme