strangers came taking an armchair
or the chest of drawers carrying them
through the house as carefully as a dead body
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after a wake each buyer receiving
a different story of how we came
to sell the item sometimes we were moving
sometimes redecorating never
the truth of what we invited them into:
a room that chambered into three
on one side what was leaving the other
what was staying and down the middle
what neither one of us could bear to keep
Andrew McMillan has published three previous collections of poetry,
and a fourth is forthcoming. His novel “Pity” is now out in paperback
[See also: Snow White in the age of inoffence]
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This article appears in the 26 Mar 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Putin’s Endgame