Читать книгу Armada - Brian Patten - Страница 10

With arthritic hands and red-varnished nails

She drags herself up the wooden stairs,

The frightening heartbeat of the house

Is made by her iron callipers.

The bomb-crushed legs, the bolted bones,

The hands that scrape like talons on the stairs,

The damned-up pain, the hate, the grief;

The soul crushed by iron callipers.

Beneath grey government-issue blankets I

Lie in a makeshift bed, feigning sleep.

Five years old. I hear her weep

As she drags herself up the wooden stairs.

Like a ball and chain her iron callipers.

She rejects all help, all love as I

In later years will learn to do.

Five years old. I cower from her authority.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

The sound echoes through my history,

And imprisons me.