In The Corridor by Saskia Hamilton

<p>Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman</p><p> </p><p>In the Corridor</p><p>By Saskia Hamilton</p><p>I passed through, I should have paused,</p><p>there were a hundred doors. One opened.</p><p>In there, someone whose name</p><p>is not yet known to me lived out</p><p> </p><p>his middle years in simple terms, two chairs,</p><p>one place laid for early breakfast, one plate</p><p>with dry toast and butter softening. There</p><p>his mind raced through writings</p><p> </p><p>he had memorized long ago while he tried</p><p>to get hold of himself. Once</p><p>in his youth he had studied with love</p><p>in the corners of old paintings</p><p> </p><p>matrices of fields and towns,</p><p>passages intricate and particular, wheat,</p><p>columns, figures and ground,</p><p>classically proportioned</p><p> </p><p>in lines that were meant</p><p>to meet, eventually,</p><p>at vanishing point. They continued,</p><p>nevertheless; they troubled the eye.</p><p> </p><p>He collected sets of books printed</p><p>in the nineteenth century, unyielding</p><p>pages, memoirs of the poets,</p><p>engravings of rurified private subjects</p><p> </p><p>in times of public sector unhappiness,</p><p>frescoes of human oddity in gatefold printing.</p><p>Why does it continue</p><p>to chasten me, he says to no one.</p><p> </p><p>It does. It is a painful mistaking,</p><p>this setting something down,</p><p>saying aloud, “it is nothing yet”</p><p>when he’d meant, not anything—</p><p> </p><p>but then nothing peered</p><p>through the keyhole, nothing</p><p>took possession. Snow on the roofs,</p><p>snow in traces on the ground,</p><p> </p><p>passersby with wet trouser-cuffs</p><p>looking to the pavement as the hill rises,</p><p>light gathering in the river</p><p>and gradually spreading.</p><p> </p>