Our ghost, Pot, has been
particularly active, exteriorising the dog.
I was awoken in the night by
a clawing sound and, descending the staircase, saw Larkin lying in the centre
of the room. Beside her on the floor was the blue towel we use to protect the
sofa she sleeps on, pulled out.
When I reached the foot of
the stairs, she got up and walked to the intersecting step between the kitchen
and snug. I noticed that the light in the snug was on. It seemed rather dim,
but I assumed this was due to it being an energy saving bulb. Reaching round
the wall with my hand, however, I realised that the light switch was in the off
position. Clicking it down made the light glow brighter, and then clicking it
up again made the light finally go off completely.
I re-tucked the towel back
into the sides of the sofa, and went to bed.
The next morning, my son went
down, as he usually does before the rest of us, and I heard him call out:
"Where is Larkin?" I ran down and into the kitchen, where I saw the
dog through the window of the back door, asking to come in from the garden. The
door was locked and bolted.
In exile, deprived of social
sustenance, Tsvetaeva lived in notebooks, in debts to log,
As a starving body eats its
own heart, and a weak story turns to the pledge of the prologue.
In Prague, she had felt
devoured, so came to Paris, receiving a small stipend. Shadows clog
The tiny holes of my bedside
clock’s speakers; and I thread through the stinging stipple of a fog.
The clawing sound is
mastication of the last thing to take cognizance of my self—the dog,
I must exteriorise the dog,
must, from the oast, as a ghost, knocknobbler and pedagogue,
As the one no one sees in the
gym, untraceable but for citations in the catalogue
For Salgado's exhibition,
irreal, ill, I must; entice her out to the brackish bog
With a beef trachea, or if
that is too grisly, a scab of sanitised jerky to jog
Salivation; and will by
evanescence enjoy some kind of esoteric dialogue
With the poet living in
Paris, 1925.
