The Burned House

Alison Davidson's Podcast

A recitation of Margaret Atwood's 1995 poem, "The Burned House" for UCD's Creating Digital Media class. Morning in the Burned House 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 woodstovewith 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 legsor know if this is a trap or blessing,finding myself back here, where everythingin 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 nowas 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 shortsand grubby yellow T-shirtholding my cindery, non-existent,radiant flesh. Incandescent. Margaret Atwood (1995)