Famous Reporter 25 (June, 2002): Stephen Edgar, poetry - 'Eighth Heaven'

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Stephen Edgar

    Eighth Heaven

I open the flyscreen door and slip inside,

Easing it shut. Low voices -- the radio? --

Drift from the dining room, although their words

 

Are indistinct. A milky sort of light

Clings to the ceiling, showing that the summer

Is well established here and the inner shadows,

 

However cool they may appear, are tacky

As bare thighs on a vinyl chair.

My mother, at the kitchen bench, is pouring

 

Afternoon tea, or would be, but I see

That, unsurprisingly, that red-brown ribbon

Is stationary and the steam hangs still,

 

A Lilliputian fog. Can time have stopped

So simply, in this simple suburb, at

This hour of day? And yet the radio

 

Is lit up and those voices natter on,

Talking the timeless issues of the day

And advertising their predated products.

 

The sideboard stands, as ever, well equipped

With seldom used utensils, special service:

The special teapot of white china, capped

 

With shining metal like a soldier’s casque;

The little glasses with their Chinese figures --

Sum Fun Tu, Me Fun Tu, Tu Yung Tu...; plates

 

Of many colours with their hidden names,

Remembering far better than I can

Their few occasions. And there is my father

 

Standing in the lounge room, half-turned away.

I summon up some greeting and can feel

The words unbodied, though not a sound disturbs

 

The house’s depth. I walk in and am baffled

To find, however much I move about him,

That that one aspect is still turned to me,

 

Unmoving, a one-sided hologram.

Net curtains billow at the window, frozen

In air, as though a child were crouched in them.

 

In the middle of the wall the oval mirror

Declines to represent me, though I come

So close my breath appears on it. I place

 

My right hand’s fingertips against the glass

And feel the surface tension of a pool

Resisting, then reluctantly giving in.

 

My fingers come away with silvered ends

Which, as they sway, show scraps of furniture

And carpet, flowers in a vase.

 

Now I am gazing out across the park.

The afternoon is caught among the leaves,

Detained indefinitely out there, and in

 

My throat. My fingers are still wet from touching

The glass; I must have brushed them on my cheek.

At the back gate I see that I am leaving:

 

That is my arm there sliding the bolt shut.

A bowl of fruit is on a table by

A window. On the round face of the apple

 

Surmounting it is held the light of the world.

It sits there like a globe of crystal, or

A painted droplet - the Earth that Dante saw

 

When he looked down at last from the eighth heaven.

Within it, sworn to secrecy, flamboyant,

Swim all the ages and the hours.