-Margaret Atwood
This is the lair of the landlady.
She is
a raw voice
loose in the rooms beneath me,
the continuous henyard
squabble going on below
thought in this house like
the bicker of blood through the head.
She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells
that bulge in under my doorsill;
she presides over my
meagre eating, generate
the light for eyestrain.
From her I rent my time:
she slams
my days like doors.
Nothing is mine
and when I dream images
of daring escapes through the snow
I find myself walking
always over a vast face
which is the land-
lady's, and wake up shouting.