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.
By David Selzer