Madder Boiled Till Midnight
Roots dug in the dry month,
the pot kept going long after supper.
She wanted a red with no doubt in it
and the water ran dark till midnight.
Madder root gives a red only if you are patient with it, and the women of the Beni M'Guild are. The pot goes on in the afternoon and stays on past the evening meal, the wool turning first to rust and then, as the household sleeps, to the deep certain red of this rug. She knotted it two fingers thick across three metres and set a darker lattice through it, the diamonds of her people, so the red would have somewhere to rest. Forty years in a mountain house have done what they always do: the pile is dense and soft, the red has lost its edge and kept its depth, and the whole thing lies flat and easy the way only a rug that has been lived on can.
In a flat with tall windows and white walls, this is the colour the room has been waiting for. A pale sofa, a brass lamp, nothing more.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.