Nostalgia, Homeache: Worlds Literature Festival (10) HOMEACHE

Homeache. The soldier with his distances. The liar with his indulgences.
The noise of deserted streets. Open mouths.

*

You hold the homeache in your hand as if it were yours, as if your hands were yours,
as if you had hands, as if you had a home.

*

You feel unjustified. You don't recognise the madness in your veins.
The aching in your arms is for a home beyond arms' length.

*

Homeache is a city suddenly empty. A familiar unidentified smell.
The self gone missing finds itself unmoored. A shower of faint stars.

*

I can no longer count its streets, says a voice you recognise.
These are your streets. They are too many to count. They are yours to lose.

*

How many ways of recognising home without inhabiting it?
Without ever having inhabited it?
Who lives there now? Whose eyes meet its people?

*

After the rain the dry street. In the dead of night a sound settling into life.
That too is an ache seeking a home. Then the sound of rain.

*

It’s like ringing a bell at night. No one hears it, not even the bell ringer.
No, not even you. Yet it's there because you recognise it.

*

Homeache can't perfect itself. It can't even move.
It makes sculptures out of absence. It is its own lost art.

*

Homeache: the fierce wind wrapping itself around trees and eaves.

*

The consolations of being consoled. Of being able to conceive of consolation.
Of a home to ache for. Of phantom limbs.

*

How many ways of making the beautiful out of lack? Why desire the beautiful?
Would home be beautiful? Would it ache? Would it desire?

*

You have arrived home. You take off your coat. You move down the hall.
Your body aches. The ache becomes your home. You close the door.