Home

The walls exhale; droplets of arterial sunset
Sprinkle the plaster - a hoped-for vital sign,
Seeping through the shutters and the alveoli of houseplants
And sliding like a kiss down the ragged concrete spine.

Up the creaking stairs, crafting a pumping heartbeat,
Down the halls with a million pink tubes,
Each with a million more octopus suction cups:
Listening, surveilling: a million sounds and views.

Covered up a thousand times, warmly, vainly,
The mould of cavities permeates the ceiling.
In a hundred-year-old hospital gown, grey from time,
Stuck in a carousel of crumbling and healing.

The mighty throat coughs up charred air
Out into the endless aquamarine zenith.
Obediently breathing, heat pouring down the chimney,
Devoted, faithful, well-wishing behemoth.

Winds shall never be so strong to shatter those crystal eyes
Or cripple the heavy, broad back of terracotta brick bones;
No hurricane can run his fiendish hands through your bay laurel hair.
The world is powerless against your scheme of blood vessels and stones.

What a whale-heart of mouse pathways and ancient flooring
Maculated with fingerprints, forever bound.
Such a pity! And what a shame, oh, what a shame
That they’ve come to demolish your framework to the ground.