Letter to a House

1 Crich Circle, Littleover, Derby

I'd like to pull you back into the sun
That beats the boundaries of your patch of lawn,
Your swags of elder, poplars, privet-hedge,
But you refuse: unable to dislodge
The load of night which presses on your roof,
That crooked, dismal, half-enchanted life
You share with an abandoned garden-shelter,
Old corrugated iron and black water,
The colonising rats who scamper still
Up the forsythia pinned back to the wall,
The tamped and piggy sandbags swollen thick
Against French-windows always on the sneck.
You like to keep your smoky head well down,
Bunkered against your neighbours, but alone,
As if night had to fall, and fall again
...