Robyn Sarah

Into the Nineties

Robyn Sarah
From: Questions About the Stars. London, ON: Brick, 1998.


Thin is the veneer
of newness on this renovated house
built early in the century. The floors
are sanded to the quick.
They will not take
another sanding. Now that the
glossy finish, rolled on slick,
has flaked away in spots,
and winter dryness cracks the weaker boards
so that they catch the foot and splinter off,
we see: it is an old floor.
No help for it.

And in the night
the banging in the pipes,
and the slow seep
of dust, out from between
the mortared bricks
of one old wall laid bare
for elegance...

So snows the old,
spreading its sediment
on all our furnishings, a
fine grime.