The Lodge

I surface in the toilet
of the toy house where I lived
and watch myself spray down
the porcelain-sided years.
“Hullo … anyone home?”
How often I would race
(shit) “Just a minute!” (drip)
in frosted windowlight
(finish, finish, just …)
to fiddle up my zip.

A fist-sized sink, a roll
of paper half played-out
on the floor. As ever,
the whole is audible
inside and out, the queer
acoustics of the space, so
near to the front-door
(and even the front gate),
that a visitor’s well-knit mask
of genteel courtesy risked
a gross, explosive flush,
a porter’s grim emergence:
“St. Anne’s?” “No. St. Hughs.”
“Ah. Might it be possible

to stroll through the gardens?”
“It might.” For this toy house
was my house (weekends,
three till ten), this crack through
which world and college
dribbled on each other.
Customers did not tip

although, once, a taxi-driver,
who shuffled in, short-taken,
paid to use the toilet
my mind is in again, where
the rest of me might be —
still fiddling (you can hear this.)

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