THE STRANGER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 631, 3 August 1951, Page 15

THE STRANGER

HE house, when he came there, was a place of refuge. A house is a sounding board, but then it was not obvious: With the silence flooding through afid through, it appeared without hatred, He saw only a watm cave, a shell, an armour withholding defeat. NOUGH to shut the safe door, lick wounds, sleep sound; It was later to find, a house is to be in, being; Shell murmurs of old seas, cave echoes doom, and armour Needs no assaulting spear, but clangs loudly trom within. A SITTING room is to sit in, mainly, with closed curtains, A hall like a key to uniock the house, lay opén secret places, A bed to enclose him among known walls, but the nightmate Crept through impregnable defefice, strangling the door and the window. SUNLIGHT in sunlight to warm, but the moon is treacherous: Waking in terror, the old cord at the throat, choking: How does the moonlight light, through what entrance When all one can find is a dungeon, with no opening? T was useless, he learned, to expect refuge anywhere: A house is to gtow in, not to forget, but grow out through retnembering. The house, too, he tound was alive, with its own conflict, And ghosts that lay dormant in sunlight found sinuous alties In moon and wind-whipped shadow along the ceiling, In creaking floors, no less in unutterable silence Till which was his own pain, that of the house, or healed Was open to question. Sun wheeled the streaming days, Nights paled with ghosts till he was among them, hapless, no longer directing Even his own failure; and the whole thing became intolerable. I shall go mad! he shouted, but never did; Through long spaces of days these things resolve themselves.

Paul

Henderson