Square de la Place Dupleix

After Les Murray


Inside the sandpit you are playing for your life. Your
bucket and spade that smiled all day long, like family
in your satchel, now work hard. Your material is sand. It weaves
a universe where you are huge, the cellar behind you,
eclipsed by twelve chestnut trees and their pigeon gods. On
and on you burrow, into your sanctuary, devotion’s
priest. There are rituals to do, like counting leaves on the sky’s loom.
Any lapse and you tumble back into the brain’s forks, rick-racking
the minutes for the lock that unclicks, the coffining dark, the
hooded stranger with Papa’s voice, the makeshift bed.