Sudden as a mirror, the red house
jumped from behind fluffed trees;
windowed four-square and flat slated
violet as final clouds, it seemed,
(or was, so solid its broad gesture) ,
a brick god chapped with litanies.
And there I was born, not I, but rather
the name of my face, the learned, caught
habits of sufference; below
the slope of the narrow roof were formed
the tribal totems that hard words
have since tabooed, evaded, sought.
Come on it suddenly as a mirror
there at the road's turn, it was so
locked and fenced that, a blank neighbour
caught in an intimacy he knows
outside his role, I watched a boy
at last turn on his heel and go.
Robin Skelton
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-red-house/
