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Carola Luther |
Carola Luther grew up in South Africa and moved to England in 1981. She works in Leeds and lives in the Yorkshire Pennines. Her first book Walking the Animals (published by Carcanet) was shortlisted for the 2004 Forward Prize for best first collection.
Moving House
It began with the owl moving into the attic
under the chimney where wind lived like an animal,
then the mouse and its offspring bedding down
in softnesses forgotten in the cellar,
then spiders, many of them, hanging their shadows
like string bags beneath them, touching toes
with themselves under lintel and eave,
then flies, dead or alive, lining up on the rims
of windows, followed by the flurry of the neighbour,
mute, with her Christmas card The weeping
donkey, then pigeons, whole flocks, and starlings
going nowhere, then the heron elbowing the owl
now withdrawn deep into the pillow of itself
two steps along into the reaches of the garret;
the postman with his post and the ghosts of the few
correspondents and their waiting people, the community
of churches coming in from their lonely plots
guarding the status of steeples on the tops of hills,
the yellowing hills, six of them, raggy and dying,
with their listing sheep and other ragamuffins
of heather, the child and her plastic farm,
the fuming woman, the timid woman, the man
who doesn’t have to say a word to keep them all
schtum, the dog and its limp, the cat, unchallenged
king of the cooling car bonnet, the car beneath
its bonnet, tarmac, oil stain, litter, weeds,
wasps stunned by darkness, damp, mould,
rot, the slow and terrible eating and eating,
until it became clear she’d have to pack up
her tarpaulin and trek Ferreira,[1] gingerly crossing
the stepping stones to a new rectangle of light,
a geometric shape of empty grass to set up home in,
where apart from the wind and the creaking
of stars, it might, for a while, be quiet.