THE NIGHT'S FOUR CORNERS

THE NIGHT'S FOUR CORNERS

Ever since I was a child

on a straight bed

in a square house

on a rectangular plot

on a street corner

in a small town

in Africa,

nights have had four corners.

Ever since I was a child

the corners of the night are pinned

to the edges of the world

by the sound of crying.

West, the hungry dogs howl and yowl at lost moons.

East, thin cocks crow like village smoke from dying fires.

North, the only lonely train full of farewell ghosts

whistles and leaves home.

Fuff-fleep, fuff-fleeeep,

asleep, you should be asleep.

I lie awake and feel the dark sounds on closed eyes.

South, the last, first car escaping,

turns a corner and unzips the sky

so the naked pale morning flesh of day is seen

and the pitch of tears

which all night vibrated silently

is altered and made cicada shrill as day.

Then the cold prickles on my skin.

Eyelids are barricades against a dark world.

No one else is waking, there is

just the silence of crying.

To the empty world's distant edge no one stirs.

The smell of utter loneliness

pins a child stiff with terror,

on a straight bed at the night's centre.

I was too small to inhabit night's lonely void.

I still am.

The night has four corners

pinned to the edges of the world by crying.

Copyright Ruth Hartley perhaps 1979 after listening to the sounds of the night in Lusaka and recalling a childhood in Harare with the same sounds.