The Centre of the World

For Susan - who shared some true time with us and enjoyed being the mother of our children

THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD

Late April blows in a foretaste of winter
drizzle
wetting a streetless, wild, outwardly
comfortless night
which drips outside doors encompassed
by Yahweh.


But inside ten-inch mudbrick walls it is
chesnut Easter.
Firestoves warm the hobs and uncurtained
widow-wide lamplight
falls outwards like drippingwedges cut from
an orange of fire.


Scotch-mist collects on the green-spouted eves
and drips
a splashy rhythm on the ironroof outside
gable sleeping lofts
where saucy air steams up from preserve-dark
tomato paste.


Side-splitting chestnuts roast on the milled
iron hotplates;
Real starch emerges through the slipped hours
cracking off skins
while children run by to dip from the basket
of hot sweet-conkers.


Flames spirit-up inside the glass of
the firebox doors,
while the milksap of heated chestnuts
pops and hisses
earth-wisdom and roast-breath up - through
the round-pole rafters.


There's homemade minestrone for dinner and cobs
of pearl-gold sweetcorn
daubed with yellow farm-made butter
that melts off the chin;
and the cast-iron kettle idles away on six
pints of raintank water.


So will it be coffee or tea? beer or a port?
Sit round the fire.
You can speak you heart by a burnished
silver flupipe
which plumbs this true-made space above
the centre of the world.

199o © Wayne David Knoll

Notes: this is set in the house that Wayne built, a family home in the Wombat Forest, near Trentham, Victoria, Australia. For Thomas Mann wrote: "But Lo, the world hath many centres, one for each created being, and about each one it lieth in its own circle, interwoven... deep into each other."