[Continuing this series of posts from my back catalogue, this somewhat whimsical piece from 1991 stems from a time a when I was re-experiencing the joys of having access to a refrigerator after a longish period of deprivation. Gratitude for small mercies and creature comforts is a theme that I revisit frequently in my poetic work. The Classical authors whom I studied at school and university are also never far from my heart.]
The Refrigerator (1991)
‘εἶναι γὰρ καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς’
[For here too the gods are present]
— Heraclitus cited in Aristotle De Partibus Animalium Book I Chapter v
In a corner of the kitchen a rectilinear volume made of plastic and soft metals isolates from the room’s temperature an artificial winterscape. Not quite a snow-scene. But a cold January morning, too cloudless and dry for snow, when the sun’s rays have just begun to thaw the night’s ground-frost and ice, imperfectly forming on the rim of ponds, is crumblingly just beginning to melt. Not quite a Bruegels. For although there are signs of human life – marks left by a serrated knife in cheese, a thumb-impression in a silver bottle top – there are, unless gingerbread men have recently been made, no miniature representations of them. There is room for no more than one pair of hands at once. Things are not too cold to touch.
The refrigerator is caressed by a steady circulation of coolants in coiled tubes. The refrigerator is a coil of metal tubes containing coolants and caressing an empty inner space. Frost sometimes forms on them. Arctic snakes.
And perhaps you will catch me one day in July, as I ease open the fridge, enjoying the unclunking of the just resistant north and south magnetic poles that secure the door, and on my face the outflow of the cold air; as I pause before extracting from this miniature, semi-arctic space, a jug of iced tea and a bowl of plums. And as I turn to greet you, I shall not perhaps, look as cozy or at ease as a philosopher, but still, in my sunshades and my shorts, far more cool.
Poetry, Politics and Language 