Basement – by Damen O’Brien

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A hatch left open where we played, so we descended  

into a subterranean place visited only by men in helmets  

and hi vis as though preparing to navigate a labyrinth, 

the underside of the hotel far above us, the sleeping,  

dining, showering, serving weight and below, gurgling  

and intestinal pipes, the blue varicose and green vines  

of wires sending television, power, calls to each room. 

We fluttered in the throat of some beast, a biblical whale,  

strung with humming fluoro and gave up pretending  

to play our game, our voices too loud, our movements  

larger than they should be, the bowels of the behemoth  

elbowed with piped hot water, indecipherable warnings. 

We wondered whether chambers riddled the world 

the way dwarves have mined the roots of every tale: 

corridors beneath each grandfather tree, service-ways  

and crawl-ways under roads and mountains, passages  

and tunnels, under all and in us too, cabinets containing  

bundled hoses, numbered tools, concrete walls echoing  

and unadorned, a floor that carries all the floors above. 

At the appointed time a man will take a clipboard down 

into each space and make a mark or sigh and shake 

his head and made a note, or come across two children 

not quite lost, but not found either, mazed and dumb 

and lead them back into the busy light that hangs 

above the hidden regulation of the world. ▼

Image: Shuaizhi Tian - Pexels

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