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THE VOICE OF HOME LEAVING A PLACE FOR THE VOICE OF
TRAVEL
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I'm home and the house is around me.
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Clack and pitch of the radiator, refrigerator hum and clock ticking
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in my room off the long hall with so many doors the plumber asked
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which one gets me out of here?
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lt's snowing outside and two boys leave their tracks on the sidewalk
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as they run down the street.
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If the phone rings I'm not going to answer it.
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I live on Ashland at Arundel and there is no water out the window,
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no ship, no mountain, no island, no landing.
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The snow is falling at an angle, flakes this time like sugar sifted to fall
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on the car tops, fence pickets, brick walls and roof turrets, limbs of the
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oak and the elm trees. I let myself stand at the window and fall with it.
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For years this nightmare in childhood: they are coming to board up the
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windows of our house. I'll never get out.
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On a dark day you need a light on to work in the afternoon.
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To walk outside you need a heavy coat, boots, a hat, gloves and a muffler.
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All these were piled and hung on a peg board at the back door. The house
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I grew up in was crowded, not enough room for everybody.
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Leave my things alone.
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When my mother had cancer her sister gave her the Twenty-third Psalm
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handwritten on a white piece of paper. They took us to wave to her,
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the white face way up in the hospital window.
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Holding the language, carrying it.
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A room of my own.
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Old clothes, colored boxes of tea lined up over the stove, cupboard full
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of spices, nails in the walls to hang things, painting by my sister, picture
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of his grandmother, books on the shelves, books beside the bed, books inside
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the closet, books in the sack he brings home. Something for dinner.
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She stayed home to look at herself in the mirror.
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A world about housecleaning: I hate it and I hate smudges, crumbs and dirty
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dishes.
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He loves me.
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All the things laid out--oranges, almonds, white narcissi, red candles,
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fresh chives in a little clay pot at the window.
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The clean house, the anger at all the things I have to do before I can write.
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I put a picture over my desk: a woman with a baby in her arms is floating
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in a black sky streaked with roses. On the ground a kerchiefed woman throws
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her arms up as if she's thrown the madonna into the sky and is keeping her
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there. The men stand in a line with their moustaches, their arms crossed.
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You spoke of a clearing and I wonder if I'm in it.
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Wood pile across the street. A landscape that is there all the time but I
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don't take it in except peripherally. The way we live. Peripherally. And
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it works this way--when I stop, when I do see, when I begin taking things in
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I find them already inside me--everything at once--it's me, not the
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things, changing.
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Nobody knows, a voice says. A voice says
coming for, carry me, trouble seen,
nobody, home.
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Putting up, gathering, storing and arranging--first speech, utterance,
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naming, repeating. I make myself a cup of tea.
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Will you be home for dinner?