16 JUNE 2007, Page 30

The Space Between

Tonight I heard again the rat in the roof, Fidgeting stuff about with a dry scuff, Pausing in silence, then scratching away Above my head, above the ceiling's thin Skin that separates his life from mine So shall I let him be, roaming so narrowly In a few finger-widths of carpentry?

The evening passes by. I sit and write And hear him skittering here and there in flight From nothing. Maybe he hears My scratching pen, my intermittent cough, Below the frail thin lath that keeps me off From harming him, as it too keeps him there, Heard but unseen in narrow strips of air.

Anthony Thwaite Anthony Thwaite's Collected Poems is published next month by Enithannon Press THE SPECTATOR 16 June 2007 49