Classic Poem

He lived in a hole in the ground,
down a ladder, in the bottom room.

This was large but low-ceilinged.
Wooden beams kept the earth up,
rugs were draped on the caked walls

apart from the one with the fresco
he'd done the winter of the shootings.

The other rooms were mostly empty
though sometimes strangers stayed—
then he'd know to remain underground.

When he went out it was usually night—
he hunted with the owls, the foxes.

He'd go to the spring in the forest,
fill two five-liter bottles.
He'd find mushrooms at first light.

He fussed over his homemade wine—
favored chestnut and elm root.

Sometimes a badger straying
across his concealed roof
would hear the music he played.

Once a mole came to visit him.
He captured it, forced it to be his pet.

He wrote and read by lamplight—
writing in the morning,
reading all through the night,

He wrote about the terror campaign.
He read about easier times.

Long ago he'd lived with a woman,
in a high windy flat
with different glimpses of the sea.

When sleep came, and it was seldom,
he'd often dream of this

and he'd wake, saying her name.
It was well she wasn't living here
in this country, these times.

It was well she wasn't down with him
in this hole in the ground.











Used by permission of the author.