The objects are not beautiful
The rooms not well proportioned,
The house not chosen for itself,
But for what could be seen from within.
So he wrote and read and fed his goldfish
Pondering good (and bad) ideas,
Built his long, rough, solid walls,
Painted untalented canvas.
He lacked, some say, the need or gift
To impart life to what he made
And scattered in his studio.
Yet life there is - in the history
Whence these random objects come.
It fuses them like a passion,
Like a life we half imagine,
Half know we have lived with.
There he stands by his home-made pool,
Bordered with too strong a green,
There in the fastidious tea-laid room,
Impatient among tea-pots,
There in reception rooms, his honours
On the wrong hip, in the wrong buttonhole.
Yet the house is warm, light streams in,
A view enters, left and right.
This upper room lacks harmony
Like others. But the place is his.
He opened this ceiling upon rafters,
To enrich his space and ours
With an uncontrollable fullness.
The rough we take with the rough
In a vain attempt to feel
The fullness of this man.
©Terry Hodgson2024
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