This is the house of a painted sunrise.
This is the man who waits
in the house of a painted sunrise.
These are the halls
that host the eager man
who waits in the house, for a painted sunrise.
These are the hedgerows lining the path,
These are ivy plastic clinging to walls,
sown for a ceaseless summer and a wanting man
who waits in the house for a painted sunrise.
These are the hands trimming ill-seasoned hedges
to line the sylvan path that leads
to gilded vaults and marble halls overwhelmed
in the echoes of a ceaseless man
who waits in the house for a painted sunrise.
This the clang of tools wielded
by hard men’s hands
planting summer in winter hedges
to line the path to the gilded vaults and marble halls
for that insatiable man,
who waits in the house for a painted sunrise.
This is the flock striding past arms
wielded by grit-mossed hard men’s hands
planting summer under a winter sun
to line the roadstead to vined arches
and gilded vaults and marble halls
to join the lonely man,
who waits in the house of a painted sunrise.
These are the chatter of vexed birds
flocked in line to evade
that crouching soot-ed man
etching velvet to sepulchre walls
that brace these great palatial halls. Outside,
tired hands mould winter to summer
for the sunny delights of the grasping man
who waits in the house of a painted sunrise.
This is boy with a camera sight.
This is a girl pursing for lit eyes.
This is the clamour at the helm of the line,
of swelling voices and rushed feet past mistyped prints,
around the careful haggard man
scoring lattice to stairwells toward a celestial spire
for the rainbow dreams
of the wild man,
who waits in this house of a painted sunrise.
These are cogwheel songs,
chirped by caged birds with machine eyes,
wide eyes recounting recondite rhymes
in earnest and in delight
bathed in a brushstroke sun
blind in the wild eye.
These are the clangs of the clock counting sunless times.
These are the lives measured by a painted sunrise.
To which gently sways
the mad man,
who waits in this mad house, for a painted sunrise.
This was inspired by Visits to St Elizabeth’s by the incomparable Ms Elizabeth Bishop and modelled after the nursery rhyme that inspired her, ’This is the House that Jack Built’.
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