She trawls through reams of paper pinned in files,
stacked on shelves, heaved into the corners
of this study and other, larger rooms;
wades through spilling, perforated sheets
of printed data she cannot decipher
that concertina on the wooden floor,
stained with jam, sprinkled with old crumbs
and marked with tags that indicate some pattern
to his vanished thought – pained, slow research
that saw two hundred articles appear,
three or four a year, in august journals.
She knows the faintly sour smell of absence
that rooms so often hold after a death –
even a lonely life sweetens the air –
how furniture seems fixed when someone dies
and often in the way. And there are albums
of photographs from trips he made – of sculpted
Grecian stone, New Guinea tribes, and snaps
showing a girl with bleached, untidy hair
who stands with one leg forward, on a pier.
Every publication in date order
leans upon a shelf, with works by Freud
in the original German. He could speak
forty major and obscure tongues.
The archivist steps back and brushes dust
from her tailored sleeve. She thinks of taking
notes and organising files, begins
planning for the small campaign ahead
to dispossess this stale fecundity.