Poem: ‘Mothballs’
Sylvia Kantaris, 18 October 1984
Things had to be preserved – embroideries, best dresses, lacy curtains, tablecloths too delicate and beautiful to use except in dreams perhaps. But in real life they just stayed, folded, in a shroud of sheets, protected from the moths by napthalene. Each cupboard, chest and wardrobe leaked a heady scent of mothballs. Things would keep.
Underneath the soil now, in her best at last, her...