Over the road
and twice the size of the house we lived in;
five stories at least; white clapboard;
wide as a barn.
The cat reconnoitred.
I followed the cat
clambering this side or that
of the mounting-block steps,
then ducking the sack
that drooped like a sleepy eye
almost to block the door but not
and in.
Darkness. Light.
Shadows that jigged
with bran-dust and wheat-dust
and softened the pulleys, the beams,
the ladder fading away
to discover this attic or that
where the miller must be
ignoring me
on my porridgy floor.
And hushed.
But roaring in fact –
the dry continual biblical thunder
of mill-wheels grinding together.
Surely
the heaviest weight in the world;
furious too
with a fury of infinite patience.
Where was I now? I'd forgotten.
No, no, I remembered.
Looking for something I was
like the cat
looking
here between rows
and rows of comfortable sacks
like soldiers asleep.
Looking for this
perhaps –
this handful of grain in a gush
overflowing my hands
at a rickety funnel
like money but free
and priceless
if only I caught it.
Maybe not this.
Maybe just wanting
the doorway again
resisting the weight at my back
breathing and grinding,
the weight and the dark,
and staring not inside but out
the way I came in.
Was that really my home there
over the road?
That acacia tree by the gate
with its scribble of yellow?
Those snapdragons snapping?
My mother afloat
in a window pane
like a bubble frozen in water?
Surely, again,
but surely, surely not mine.
Besides
I had turned into dust.
White hands; white clothes; white hair.
And next thing would drift away
through white air.
ANDREW MOTION
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