Sudden as a mirror, the red house <br />jumped from behind fluffed trees; <br />windowed four-square and flat slated <br />violet as final clouds, it seemed, <br />(or was, so solid its broad gesture) , <br />a brick god chapped with litanies. <br /> <br />And there I was born, not I, but rather <br />the name of my face, the learned, caught <br />habits of sufference; below <br />the slope of the narrow roof were formed <br />the tribal totems that hard words <br />have since tabooed, evaded, sought. <br /> <br />Come on it suddenly as a mirror <br />there at the road's turn, it was so <br />locked and fenced that, a blank neighbour <br />caught in an intimacy he knows <br />outside his role, I watched a boy <br />at last turn on his heel and go.<br /><br />Robin Skelton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-red-house/
