Number One, Back Mount

'Silver Royd Mill' black clay By Frances Ann Norton, seen at, www.littlemoorpottery.com; or, frances-ann.blogspot.com:  
The bannisters up
How interesting it is that
They are the same at number one, number three and number five.
So old and black with thick, thick carving.

Here at number one,
Piles of children’s clothes covered in a dust-sheet
lie like a library of children’s lives.
Folded neatly, sorted by age, on each landing of each of the four floors.

Children that come and go quickly,
children that stay for a while
and the ones that live here.
Stationed around the landings of each floor are weird locked wardrobes with padlocks on the front.

In the front room – not the best-front-room
but the every-day-back, front-room
Gas fire on full
Stifling, dusty and winter-time-hot.
Richard sits scissors in hand.

He is perhaps six or seven years old
A small thin pale boy, quiet and watchful with wild curly red hair
He’s off school for the day – enviable position especially if you are not that sick.
He has taken all of the dolls
And cut off their hair.
No one stops him or says anything.

The kitchen smells strongly of cat food and cabbage
The shelves and cupboards and table are a museum to the Tupperware phenomenon.
Darren is in the cupboard polishing shoes.
In there are more shoes than I’ve ever seen in one place,
it’s like a second hand shoe shop.
They don’t really belong to any one child –
Darren has a lot of polishing to do, he’s the eldest and has chores.

In the back yard
A small square of garden with spinning spider-web drier.
Along one edge are Darren’s rabbit hutches
Next to them is the pile.
The pile is fascinating to me, I look at it every day.
On it is left-over food from dinners past
Cornflakes and porridge,
carrot,
swede
cabbage
potato
It’s massive and very, very slowly it rots.

It grows mold, breaks down
Cats and rats eat it
Frost covers it
It grows higher daily
A symphony in rot.


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