The Furniture

John Updike

To things we are ghosts, soft shapes
in their blindness that push and pull
a warm touch tugging on a stuck drawer,
a face glancing by in a mirror
like a pebble skipeed across a passive pond.

They hear rumors of us, things, in their own rumble,
and notice they are not they were in the last
[century,
and feel, perhaps, themselves lifted by tides
of desire, of coveting, a certain moisture
mildews their surfaces, and they guess that we have
[passed
They decay, of course, but so slowly; a vase
or mug survives, a thousand uses. Our succesive
ownerships slip from them, our fury
flickers at their reveerie's dimmest edge.
Their numb solidity sleeps through our screams