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The Lodger

By Fiona Sampson b. 1963 Fiona Sampson

You could figure it as a trapdoor,

blur of hinge and

down

into the unconscious of this stranger

moving around your garden like a trap—

making all the greens unstable

as the warble of nausea come bang up to greet you.

Bang to rights

is how he'd like to have your house. Cuckoo,

wool-wearing garden-dweller,

new-age Salvationist, holy among your cow-parsley

and roses.

Meanwhile, the unaccustomed heat.

Meanwhile, a sky tunnelling upward—

sense of proportion—golden section

of elder hedge; then the disgraceful paddock gone wild.

Source: Poetry (December 2007).

Biography

Fiona Sampsonwas born in London and trained as a violinist. Her early musical studies and professional career as a musician in Europe influenced her editing and writing. She studied at Oxford University and received a PhD in the philosophy of language from Nijmegen University in the Netherlands. Her poetry collections include Folding the Real (2001); The Distance Between Us (2005), a novel in verse; Common Prayer (2007); and . . .

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