A Doll's House

A Doll’s House

Observe the fine detail

Of this perfect, tiny, tidy world

Where everything sits in rightful place

Sitting silently

Waiting for someone to call

To come and play

To breathe life-force and action

Into this dead world 

See how carefully the maker has toiled

How exactly his model replicates reality

With its inter-connected rooms

Its attics, basements and cellars

Its doors and its floors

Its halls and its walls

And a side that opens to the world

Revealing to wider inspection

So that anyone may peer inside

And, with a genial God-like presence

Watch the goings-on

Of this toy-land territory

Made in matchless miniature 

Look how finely-wrought the furniture

The kitchen’s pixie pots and pans

Real carpets and silver cutlery

And notice how small the figures

Lifeless little people

Tiny tokens of a household

Scaled-down and smaller than any doll

But still too large to be in right proportion

To the rest of their wooden world 

How beautiful, how ideal it all appears

And yet how quiet, dusty and dormant

And how empty this small world is

Undisturbed by cries of living children

A shining showpiece

That is a house and yet not a home

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012