Archaeology

Preparing for the living-room's latest face-lift,
I pulled the old shelves from the wall.
For twenty years, they and their rows of dusty books
Had helped to form the image of the room.
Now that they've gone,
I see the strips of long-forgotten paint that they concealed.
Aubergine! A fashionable colour of the time;
A time of marriage, crawling infants, tensions -
Different lives lived by other selves.

In the ancient, untouched dust
Lay artefacts and relics:
Tarnished coins, a scrap of dried-up leaf,
Memories of meals and drinks,
And friends no longer friends,
The wounding thrusts that cannot be unsaid,
The sullen silences
That cannot now be broken,
The sherds of what was once a married life.

It is a sad and sobering thing
To come, all unprepared, upon the past.
So now I am impatient
To make a start with roller and fresh paint,
That covers all beneath it with one coat.