Rat's Castle, near Ashen, Clare, Suffolk

As teenagers in the late 1960s we'd dare ourselves to enter this abandoned farm house: table set for breakfast, shirt on the ironing board and the door open...

Transcript

Ghost white leaves in a dark stove

and fly-soft petals on wedding bows

A Victorian prune-hooded pram full of the hollows

of broken, tinted cheeks of china dolls

Stiff nicotine weave in old petticoat folds

and turf thick utility coats, unfolded, cold

An egg-bold brooch edged with dull gold

pinned to the skeleton of twin-set and pearls

A locket of lobe-long, rabbit soft curls

and three khaki coloured photos of land girls

Three pink teeth of a foundation wear fastener

and the thick wire coupling of a pre-war suspender

Green and pocked skin of a copper fender

and fifty mildew matchboxes full of sunflower seeds

In a body length cavity, where hornets scream,

the dust hangs in tails and ice in beads,

as slabs of sunshine like artist’s knives

wrap the dark in bars where the larvae jive.

The ironing board, a crust of accidental ash

from vigils out of doors conflagrating sacks

to exorcise shadows the colour of holes

out of which clay-clad corn clumps rise up:

savage eyed, makeshift demons on poles.

In the umbrella black cellar, spiders unfold

as old skirts fuel a fire around which soft mouths cajole.

Squat shapes centrepiece laughter – fear is all.

As the sublime robe of darkness conscripts our minds

does the membrane of order merely mark time?