In the burned house I am eating breakfast.
You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,
yet here I am.

The spoon which was melted scrapes against 
the bowl which was melted also.
No one else is around.

Where have they gone to, brother and sister,
mother and father? Off along the shore,
perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,

their dishes piled beside the sink,
which is beside the woodstove
with its grate and sooty kettle,

every detail clear,
tin cup and rippled mirror.
The day is bright and songless,

the lake is blue, the forest watchful.
In the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread.

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

I can’t see my own arms and legs
or know if this is a trap or blessing,
finding myself back here, where everything

in this house has long been over,
kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,
including my own body,

including the body I had then,
including the body I have now
as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,

bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards
(I can almost see)
in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts

and grubby yellow T-shirt
holding my cindery, non-existent,
radiant flesh. Incandescent.

                    Every branch big with it,
                    Bent every twig with it;
            Every fork like a white web-foot;
            Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
        The palings are glued together like a wall,
        And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

            A sparrow enters the tree,
            Whereon immediately
        A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
        Descends on him and showers his head and eye
                    And overturns him,
                    And near inurns him,
        And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

            The steps are a blanched slope,
            Up which, with feeble hope,
        A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
                    And we take him in.