Poem: ‘Acetylene: evacuated to a house in Wales, lit by gas’
Jon Silkin, 5 November 1981
For gas the house waters carbide, often meagre for burning, though our lungs cough up a shred of acid that we sicken on. Up at
plastered stone, flaky and gravid, the sheep butt: smudged with an orange dye wool inside mist wastes at the mothy house. Then gas heaves. Quick, turn the spiggots, across their limp flow, igniting this powdery whiteness damped to gas, a flame that looms, raising a...