This day marks fifty years since we came to live

in this square, detached, and spacious house, built

to a design from a Georgian pattern book

one hundred and eighty two years ago –

when the First Opium War ended, the First

Afghan War began, and the Mines Act

prohibited women, and girls, and boys

under 10 from working underground.

 

***

 

We moved in on a Valentine’s Day, the day

Solzhenitsyn began his enforced exile,

the Soviet Union like the Roman

Empire, and, indeed, Jehovah himself,

considering banishment from paradise

as the most exquisite of punishments.

 

***

 

We celebrated the move into this

domestic, suburban arcadia

by collecting a Chinese takeaway

from round the corner, and sharing it

with two close friends – one now long dead, the other

utterly lost to forgetfulness.

 

***

 

Dawn lights the birch tree through the eastern windows.

On the sedum in the small, railed garden

at the front sun sets. For two generations

lives in all their motley have found a way

to thrive beneath the roof’s adamantine slates,

among aspidistras and peace lilies,

among books, prints, paintings, among ceramics

and furniture, among music and voices,

the memorabilia of our lifetimes.

 

***

 

This is a sentient place, filled with

the light touch of fond spirits, indifferent

to the noisy dust of empires falling.