Grief House by Eric Beach

for gwen

enter through unreasoned gates
one over-grown night, when uncut stars
on crossed wires catch wool-wisps of light

follow a dull curve of drive, down
past macrocarpa & pine, antiseptic
smelling, but there’s no anodyne

you must open a door which warns
that bones & iron rust, enter here
seek what you’ve lost because you must

slummock tears, you touch wet walls
coming unglued, appearances thin
maps of darker places coming through

strange consolation, to build anew
to leave behind, light arrives & is lost
& a roof staring open, bewildered & kind.

From: Beach, Eric, “Grief House” in Westerly, No., Winter 1994, p. 39.
(http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/westerly/all/230113.pdf)

Date: 1994

By: Eric Beach (1947- )