Cash Feus
Everything is covered with dust or dustsheets.
The armchairs look like ghosts of themselves,
only suitable for ghosts to sit in.
This is no abode for the living, and we,
its late occupants, drift through what were once
solid walls, moaning softly because we can find
little more than ashes to eat, the spider
the only one here with a well-stocked larder.
Five days a week, we’re visited by people
whose blood is still warm. As they work, they listen
to the radio: its voices are far clearer
and louder than ours. Our presence hardly disturbs them.
All our possessions have been replaced
with tools we can’t use, papers we’d never normally
be seen dead reading. We’re revenants, as much in need
of renovation as the house we’re haunting.
Henry King has published poems and translations in Stand, PN Review, A Bird Is Not a Stone (Glasgow: Freight 2014) New Poetries V (Manchester: Carcanet 2011) and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of Glasgow. This is his blog: henrymking.blogspot.co.uk