Compass points: North
In this house there is a room,
a room of sky and leaves,
austere, cold, secret,
reached only by a thin, oak ladder.
The room is filled with books;
a sleeping trumpet, amber dubbin,
scraps of pottery, elephants and foreign masks,
shards of glass and silica, a sheep’s skull
jostle with stark sketches of gaunt trees –
and an incongruous nativity
on wood, tiny,
hanging from the elm beam of a stable –
the child now star-led to the north.
(Margaret Tufton, 1992)
