Robert Sheppard

THE HOUSE OF OPPORTUNITY

after Michaël Borremans

Rows of red-shuttered windows
Open across the face of the House

Into dark orifices or into
Shaded living spaces

For his fingers or for the figures
Playing themselves

Without purpose he thinks
He places his hands before him

For this private lesson
Without compulsion harbouring music

A white-scarfed woman and perhaps three
Others walk from its shut green door

Away from marble steps as though
They’ve been expelled to scale

This thing up in its watery solidity
Transport it

To a landscape under veils of cloud
Torn from the pages of art

By a wooded hollow flecked with gulls
In any space it fills the House

Houses itself like a song
While the people who are dwarfed

Or dwarf it like him draw
Toward purpose

Pooled in their own shadows
Or drown waist-deep in discovery

1 July 2009