Unminded

No sign out here, too far away to notice:

The storm that sweeps the crest of the Pacific,

Wiping the atolls; or the mountain range

That marks the limit of the hermit kingdom

With sunblind flanks of snow; the Serengeti

Mapped by those stubborn herds again. No sign

Of drift along the faint meridians.

Less far afield the western slopes unfold

With almost faultless progress to the plains,

And nothing but some shadows on the Darling

Below a bridge to give a hint of it,

Losing themselves forgetfully downstream.

Closer to home those favoured destinations,

Happened upon, returned to, memorised

In anecdotes and snapshots, start to shed

Their dates and their occasions. Even now

The path around the bay grows dubious,

The lookout hesitates to name its view,

As some small tremor like a seismic tap

Slides under them. In scrupulous departments

The papers, or their virtual counterparts,

Are finalised and undersigned, the drawer

One folder lighter or the file reduced

Perhaps by some few dozen kilobytes.

The garden presses to the house, drawn in

By absence to the windows, as they stare

At rooms that seem to warp unsteadily

To hold their size and structure, unsustained

By acts repeated daily, or the force—

Imagine it—of an imagination.

For that, with all its filaments unravelled

And cells pulled with reluctance from the walls,

The kitchen bench, the bookshelves and the wardrobe,

Hung with its flaccid replicas, has been

Dismantled and removed and parcelled out

To others, for however long it lasts.