At a furniture museum once I saw
Two chairs said to have been Lord Nelson's.
Yellow faded straightbacked
Chairs with almost all their arms,
Roped off and looking weak with age.
Even a hint of ghosts from his time
Had fled from them, and there was no
Faint fragrance of a former age.
Too much time had passed; there can be
Too much time, and so much time that
Sheer time itself
Shears and severs things
From even other things, and creates about them
A hangdog disconnection or
Estrangement from every other object.

Nothing of the Regency lingered, and
Nothing of the present seemed suited to them.
The slightest slip of a seancelike air
Altered, a bit, their vacuity.
Only where the silk was worn
Did some hint of the past
Come across. But even that was an absence.
Only what was lacking remained.
There comes a point when so much time has passed
That blatant artifacts become
Only their barren selves, divorced from all auras
And any other umbra. Your shoes (if they last)
Will someday—in another world of suns and moons—
Have nothing to do with you—or anyone at all.
Things excuse themselves until
They look like things but are no longer, really,
There. Nelson's chair, which might boast
To an envious and admiring world
That it once nested the bottom of
Lady Hamilton, instead sleeps behind
An invisible wall of withdrawal
And doesn't even glower. Mummification
Awaits your microwave, and even your most
Personal purse and pocket things.

Orphaned and
Unreal. Where do old objects go, one wonders,
When they hang around so long?
They're both here and gone. We sniff
A whiff of the venerable
From ancient bric-a-brac,
But what those things are
Has abdicated, leaving only their crowns around.
Their inner tide has ebbed, leaving a frail and lacey
Edge or line to mark on the sand
Where they once made their greatest advance.
Dumb unliving things may die
Before they disappear.