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This mansion has many rooms.
Sunlit salons with faded wallpaper.
Antique rings that plink against green glass spikes.
Ponderous chests of linens and lavender.
Traycloths and crochet-work mothballed in forgotten cupboards.
Prussian-blue linoleum cold against bare feet,
A Bakelite wireless and a piano, out of tune,
Behind rusty-locked heavy brown doors.
I thought the keys were lost
Until you came.

There is an attic too.
Broken Victorian toys, sepia ancestors with shattered glass,
Fragile gas mantles, flames that flicker in the draught,
Rag rugs that yield choking dust,
Up narrow steps with threadbare hessian,
Tarnished stair-rods and no banisters.
I thought They had hidden the map.
But then you came.

There is a garden too.
Diseased, rank bushes and poisonous berries.
There is a cellar too.
Perilous stairs into the pit.
Cockroaches and the carcase of a mouse;
Discarded carton of milk on the foetid flooded floor.
I thought the staircase would subside,
I thought the rats would kill,
Till you accompanied me.