Cob - Fiona Sampson

 Cob

The way we used to live
in the old house a house
whose thick walls curved like the living
flanks of beasts

do you remember curving walls
the deep-set windows like
a kind of hope their light
white as the whitewashed walls

that someone made from living
things from straw and hair
and took the teeming mud
salted with living things

in tiny constellations
which hung round us there
baked with the dreaming hair
of horses the corn stalks

that crackled underfoot
and in the hand as they
were cut the mysteries
of domesticity

are also sacrifice
each kitchen knife shining
like joy they took the mud
and baked it as you might

a loaf made from corn
because the crust of things
rises and falls like breath
in the flanks of beasts.

The Catch, Fiona Sampson, 2016.