THIS poignant description of a visit to an empty house, presumably after a bereavement, comes from Through A Rear-View Mirror, featuring poems by Marjorie Mitchell (Annie Reid Press, £5), one of the short-listed pamphlets in this year's Callum Macdonald Memorial Award, run by the National Library of Scotland.
FINAL CHECK
The house has slipped into no man's land.
We don't belong here any more.
Junk mail on the mat is cold,
the hall is flat, expressionless,
radiators are quiet, dust has settled.
Silence has elbowed out busyness and warmth,
taken possession of empty rooms.
There is nothing here, and yet,
we tread gently through the spaces she has left,
pick up the odd pin, coin, tack,
leave the oxalis on the ledge where it belongs,
wonder who will be the first
to say "Let's go."
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