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Poetry, Geology and Environmental Science Collaboration Commissioned Poem The Cure We had come to the old house for a cure – or a reason, a road map, or a railroad, inked across a page, to take us to recovery. Feelings were running high – we sat beside locked doors with children on our knees. The rooms inside were where the old men sat. They were weighing us, and watching us. But who, we wondered, could possibly save us? Outside, in the rose garden, decisions were being made. The light reminded me of lost things – keys and spectacles, and names and dates, words left on the tip of the tongue. There was a smell we recognised – not of warmed earth, the wet grass each morning, but of oil, of dirty summer afternoons in traffic jams, of oil slicked on wave-edged beaches, in the mouths and wings of fish and birds, oil in the old tank where the neighbour’s cat lay pristine among blistered paint, the rust, the aching sun. In the waiting room the children now grew restless, mothers wiping noses, scrolling on their phones. There were perspex layers, locks 8
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between us, a plastic box of blunted crayons, no paper on the table; the air was empty of animal sounds. When I looked again the children’s hair had started to fall out in clumps, skin puckering like old balloons. Shown in, at last, the rooms were being dismantled and I knew then like a trip of flame, a spark from an ignition, we’d forgotten dates we’d meant to keep before. Now everywhere was being emptied: files and boxes balanced on the grubby office chairs. And I think of them now, how sorry we were, the old men, and the children, the door propped like a garden door we had left open, once before, through which we could not really leave, despite the urge to run. Deryn Rees-Jones Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet and critic. Her book of poems Erato was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2019. She is the author of Paula Rego: The Art of Story (Thames & Hudson 2019). 9

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between us, a plastic box of blunted crayons, no paper on the table; the air was empty of animal sounds. When I looked again the children’s hair had started to fall out in clumps, skin puckering like old balloons. Shown in, at last, the rooms were being dismantled and I knew then like a trip of flame, a spark from an ignition, we’d forgotten dates we’d meant to keep before. Now everywhere was being emptied:

files and boxes balanced on the grubby office chairs. And I think of them now, how sorry we were, the old men, and the children, the door propped like a garden door we had left open, once before, through which we could not really leave, despite the urge to run.

Deryn Rees-Jones

Deryn Rees-Jones is a poet and critic. Her book of poems Erato was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2019. She is the author of Paula Rego: The Art of Story (Thames & Hudson 2019).

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