I recall some rusty nails, three or four,
in the top right-hand drawer
of an oak desk in my uncle's house.

And that dull pair of shoes he used to wear,
bought for gardening from an Oxfam shop,
their ancient leather hard as bakelite,

that he wore until the soles were gone.
They were also worn by another then long dead
and nameless, save to strangers far away:

for we felt someone there we couldn't see,
that rose from the life the shoes had led
before they came into my uncle's home.

And when he died I found those hand-wrought nails,
all wrapped with muslin, very old,
and wondered what their hidden history was

and what they might have pierced so long ago.
Then I knew someone else was standing near,
out of sight but with a hammer in his hand,

who reached for me from suffering and love
and knew my heart was lamed and broken down,
like some old horse that's never known a shoe.

I used a pin of mistletoe
to unbubble a group of seated men,
who smelled of pipes and musky tweed
and tied small bones with the hair of dolls.

‘These are the bones of yourself as a bird
and we are your cupboard uncles.
We will guide you down the ways of life,
taking the roles of all your loves
and show you joy and the hard in red
to make you forget your sins in cloud.
Now, my dear, it’s two o´clock,
time for nuts and scented oil.’

But I saw that they had the gaze of owls
and midnight crouched in their horny smiles,
so I fled to the house by a shadeless route
and stamped in every sky-filled pool,
surrounding myself with suns in drops.

Now ravens walk on the distant lawns
and discharge their calls in the moving air,
and still I see in the looking-glass
the unfortunate whistling face.