I can walk from my room past the cuckoo clock,
past the picture of the Pope and bedroom doors
with no rooms behind, past the head of the stairs
where Grandmaman sat me on my potty, down
the staircase where I waited, barred
behind banister rails, into the too bright too new
playroom, poisoned to me now because I broke
the Chinese plate. The playbox has an inside but
no outside. In the kitchen, where my mother cried,
spilt Ovaltine sizzles on the Raeburn hot plate. Outside,
tall firs comb the wind. Papa's glasses lie beneath the ash tree.

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