National Poetry Day, Philip Gross poem "Room Inside"

From the website for National Poetry Day, a classic Philip Gross poem:

Room Inside

Philip Gross

There’s a room in my house where nobody goes
except me:
a still room, a light room,
a where-I-go-to-write room,
an any-day, any-time, a middle-of-the-night room,
a feeling-low-and-slow or a high-as-a-kite room.
Feel free!


There’s a room in my house where nobody goes.
There are cupboards and corners that nobody knows
inside me.

There’s a room in my house where nobody has been

from Friedmanlynn on Flickr.com

except me:
a just-behind-your-face room,
an orbiting-in-space room,
an earthquake-shaking-with-the-thumping-of-the-bass room,
a somewhere-to-escape-to-outside-the-human-race room,
a just-close-your-eyes-and-you’ll-vanish-without-trace room
suddenly.

There’s a room in my house where nobody has been.
There’s a view from my window nobody has seen
inside me.


There are secret compartments that nobody’s guessed
except me:
a shadow room, a cool room,
a chalky-smelling school room,
a kidney-shaped Hollywood parties-by-the-pool room,
an old-French-blokes-in-berets-playing-boule room,
a rusty-dusty buckets full of grandfather’s tools room,
a locked trunk that might be full of jewels room
possibly.

There are secret compartments that nobody’s guessed.
There’s another direction than north/south/east/west
inside me.

There’s a room that is private, that no one can own.
Come and see.
A music room, a dance room,
a things-found-quite-by-chance room,
a jungle room, a tigers-in-amongst-the-potted-plants room,
a hiding-from-a-hundred-jolly-uncles-and-strange-aunts room,
no family…


An X marks the spot room,
a don’t ask why, why-not room,
a sauna-in-the-winter-and-a-freezer-when-it’s-hot room,
a sail-to-the-horizon-in-a-little-tin-pot-yacht room
with its own sea.

A cellar room, an attic room,
a semi-automatic room,
a can’t-sit-still-cos-I’m-too-emphatic sort of amateur-dramatics room –
oh, tragedy!

There’s a room that is private, that no one can own.
You can build one yourself out of breath, flesh and bone.
There’s a padlock that opens to nobody’s key.
Just knock,
and wait,
and knock,
and wait,
and when a voice says ‘Who’s there?’
say, ‘Just me’.


From the UK Poetry Day website:  http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/poems/
Click on tab at top for recent Poetry reviews to get leads on some newer poem collections in several styles of poetry.  Especially noteworthy is Pablo Neruda and Manolis.