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     Hermione     The Light on the Door     Jade     What We Give  
   
The Ghosts of Who We Were     The Last Thing            (Back to TOP) 

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The Light on the Door
 

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  Something about the old house we passed 
  In the last town. Orleans? Coventry? 
  The door with the long glass oval.
  The pale light, failing light, canted on the blind surface, 
  The glow from the bevel, rainbowed ,
  Caved in on time, on history. 

  Nothing in nature so catches at the well of sadness 
  As this, nothing. Not evocative mist 
  Slow-wreathing through budded woodlands .
  Not breeze-blown, rippling lake water as it laps ashore 
  Not warm violets shaded, 
  Not airy honeysuckle lattice .

  This pang can come anywhere. What is the reason? I think 
  Such light, lilac, slopes across lives almost ours 
  That we didnft have – a weight 
  As of a slumbering presence within the walls 
  Of old houses, an immanence 
  Brooding. What we long for. 

  Almost as if we could open the burnished door, 
  Step inside a hallway, a rose-dark room with high ceiling, 
  And, looking out from the other side 
  Through wavery glass of a tall window, 
        find life in a lost year, 
  Old sunlight, rung chimes, shimmer 
  Of the possible. Out of reach. Ours 
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