Читать книгу The Dream in the Next Body - Gabeba Baderoon - Страница 4

True

To judge if a line is true,

banish the error of parallax.

Bring your eye as close as you can

to the line itself and follow it.

A master tiler taught me this.

People wish to walk where he has kneeled

and smoothed the surface.

They follow a line to its end

and smile at its sweet geometry,

how he has sutured the angles of the room.

He transports his tools by bicycle –

a bucket, a long plastic tube he fills with water

to find a level mark, a cushion on which to kneel,

a fine cotton cloth to wipe from the tiles the dust

that colours his lashes at the end of the day.

He knows how porcelain, terracotta and marble hold

the eye. He knows the effect of the weight

of a foot on ceramic. Terracotta’s warm dust cups

your foot like leather. Porcelain will appear

untouched all its life and for this reason

is also used in the mouth.

To draw a true line on which to lay a tile,

hold a chalked string fixed

at one end of a room and whip

it hard against the cement floor.

With a blue grid, he shakes out

the sheets of unordered space, folds

them into squares and lays them end on end.

Under his knees, a room will become whole and clear.

At night, he rides home over ground that rises

and falls as it never does under his hands.