Asha Gatland, Sestina

Sestina by Asha Gatland

I return to my old home Too old now for it to be the same place Of my youth, the house with the lemon tree. There are cold tiles instead of a table

Covered in newspaper to stop the paint

From dripping. No jam fingers on white walls,

No crayon marks. Now the walls Close in on all sides with no sense of home

To hide them. Polish masks the trace of paint, Fills it with the scent of another place, One with a linen cloth on its table.

There are no lemon blossoms on the tree –

A skeleton of a tree –

Twistedly naked, bare as white on walls. A husk of its fruit lolls on the table

In a glass bowl carved to mirror a home. Dried of juice or seeds it assumes the place Of a still life – frozen – ready to paint.

But there’s no space at the table to paint The death of a lemon or undressed tree.

Beneath the mantel, a cleaned-out fireplace 88

Echoes the hollow emptiness of walls, The empty hollowness of a blank home With plastic lemons on it clothed table. I sit at the clothed table

Imagining what likeness I would paint If somebody asked me about my home, What it became without fruit in its tree

Or crayoned drawings to soften its walls. What kind of a home, what kind of a place?

I know I could draw this place With its vacant chairs and spotless table Breathing the foul scent of polish on walls Scrubbed free of ink and jam. Though I could paint The wasted bones of a once fruitful tree

As the allegory for my old home

My mind sees this place: the colour of paint, The papered table, lemons in the tree A place without walls, eternally home.