'Decluttering'

We went back to your house yesterday.
Everything the same as before- street of hardy perrenials and students lugging bags.
Fremd, I paused on the threshold a moment,
Watching the pizza flyers dance under the gate,
Trying not to remember that blue-light blood-night
When, numb, we murmured our goodbyes.

Hiding behind practicality's facade
Gently prising out the hooks
These objects have left in us.
Draw them out slowly, slowly.
Why lie? I cannot help but weep.

Again, it is the little things
Which seep unwelcomed into my heart
And overflow-
Christmas cards, old-world garish
Writer and receiver here preserved
In minute, tangible fragments of reality.
Under yellowed, threefold school reports
The tiniest lacy sunhat, for my babyhood visits.

The old wooden dresser holds traces of strangers-
A bright young woman with laughter in her eyes,
Scarf billowing behind her in the breeze,
"L'Arc de Triomphe". The scent of honeysuckle.
Only then follows the descent, the death of youth,
Of femininity; beautiful, secret possessions locked away in a drawer
Postcards of bright places only once seen,
Butterfly colours fading to moth.

In a faded, square-shouldered coat
The grandfather I cannot recall-
A thirst for languages, insatiable as my own-
His finger tracing foreign characters
Until, guided by a slender pillar of white,
He too became objects and thoughts.

A gold and garnet ring in a velvet cocoon,
A stack of German grammar books marked in a quavering, painstaking script.
Silent, I collect these traces,
Feeling unworthy, materialistic, cruel.
Yet- and so my father tells me,
What use have they of these things now?

Better by far to take them into the world,
Breathe new life into them, use them for their worth, remember the loved ones they represent,
And, one day, when I too am ashes,
Pass them on-
Tributes, heirlooms, memories
Of a time that once was
And will never be again.