Soap Suds

Lea Wight, "Cottage Sink"

Soap Suds

This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the big

House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom open

To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop

To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of a child.

And these were the joys of that house: a tower with a telescope;

Two great faded globes, one of the earth, one of the stars;

A stuffed black dog in the hall; a walled garden with bees;

A rabbit warren; a rockery; a vine under glass; the sea.

To which he has now returned. The day of course is fine

And a grown-up voice cries Play! The mallet slowly swings,

Then crack, a great gong booms from the dog-dark hall and the ball

Skims forward through the hoop and then through the next and then

Through hoops where no hoops were and each dissolves in turn

And the grass has grown head-high and an angry voice cries Play!

But the ball is lost and the mallet slipped long since from the hands

Under the running tap that are not the hands of a child.

Louis MacNiece

"To which he has now returned." Most of us must have experienced this at least once in our lives, where a scent takes us back to a place or event or person from the past so swiftly, and for a moment comes vividly alive. To read the details MacNiece remembers is wonderful - his age, the season, the house, its unique objects, and the feeling of being in a child-size body. And how he so brilliantly shows the shock of returning to the present moment and his grown up body. It's the experience this poem encapsulates that makes me wonder sometimes are these moments like monuments somewhere, continuously present-tense? Of course, this would mean the bad moments too. Which doesn't bear thinking on. Nonetheless, I wonder - is Now truly as ephemeral as all this? Is there a something eternal touching this minute? I mean, I know there is, but it slips just beyond my comprehension. I suppose this is another layer of the "we see through a glass darkly" concept told about in 2 Corinthians. A mystery that beckons me further in.