One night
by Ian Seed — The Friday Poem on 10/05/2024
If you know Wuthering Heights, you can’t read this sonnet without recalling Mr Lockwood reaching through glass to silence a rattling branch, only to meet the icy hand of Catherine Linton, “a waif for twenty years”. But here it’s not just a hand; it’s a whole girl, other children behind her. What can they want? Is it a dream? And why does the speaker find this tapping “oddly soothing”? He ignores it (how?) and goes back to sleep, but there’s a difference. Although the children weren’t invited in, there are holes in the glass. Things have changed.
One night
I was woken by a tapping on the window.
When I opened the curtain, I saw a small girl
with her palms on the glass, other children
huddled behind her. To be friendly, I placed
my fingertips on the inside of the pane
where hers were and tapped back. I thought
of inviting them in, but it was far too late
so after a few moments I closed the curtain
and returned to bed. The tapping grew louder,
more insistent, but I found it oddly soothing
and was soon asleep again. At first light
the visitors were gone, but there were holes
in the glass the size of a child’s fingertips
and my room was much colder.
Ian Seed’s latest publications are Night Window (Shearsman, 2024), The Dice Cup (Wakefield Press, 2022), (from the French of Max Jacob), and The River Which Sleep Has Told Me (Fortnightly Review Odd Volumes, 2022), (from the Italian of Ivano Fermini). For more information see www.ianseed.co.uk.
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