The house among the trees on the hillside opposite is visible in the
afternoon light.
I could not see it
this morning nor yesterday evening, but now I see its rusted roof;
it shows in a gap
between the fir trees. Four cleared fields bound by stone walls
and crossed by an
overgrown path are a napkin fixed at its neck; behind it,
the hill rises, a
patchwork of confer, fern and heather: rough, poor terrain.
The house, empty of
its people but their belongings remaining where they were.
Mountain sheep come
near but don’t trespass; the trees, however, will. They will
break and enter,
force their way through the walls, dismantle the roof, split the
floors.
The effects of a
household will mix with leaf litter: bottles, cups, saucers, a
necklace,
an old radio, a
hammer, an iron, a light shade, the cheap picture frames, a tin box
with buttons still
inside, no, the buttons with the black flakes of rust mixed through.
All will be buried
in the soil, but not the people.
They are already in
the soil, but not the same soil, nor anywhere in these parts;
they are buried
across the sea, where necessity took them.
So the house was of
no use; the possessions had no use, not even to looters or vandals.
How strange are
lives that can be so intense minute by minute and, yet, one morning,
bags packed, a home
is left with all its paraphernalia in place; the fields are left, the
hillside left,
and for love or
health or money, what was once all can suddenly be valueless.
