Square de la Place Dupleix

Inside the sandpit you are playing for your life. Your

bucket and spade that smiled all day long, like family

in your satchel, now work hard. Your material is sand. It weaves

a universe where you are huge, the cellar behind you,

eclipsed by twelve chestnut trees and their pigeon gods. On

and on you burrow, into your sanctuary, devotion’s

priest. There are rituals to do, like counting leaves on the sky’s loom.

Any lapse and you tumble back into the brain’s forks, rick-racking

the minutes for the lock that unclicks, the coffining dark, the

hooded stranger with Papa’s voice, the makeshift bed.