the tidy bachelor

The Tidy Bachelor

I have been made destitute, workers in my house,
no water or heating, chalk dust and dirty footsteps.
Stay in a hotel that has institutional white sheets
can’t sleep; think of hospitals infirmity and death.

Workers gone, women arrive, in a van, to clean;
fill my little house with never ending natter, I sit
on the terrace try to read, can’t concentrate, they
laugh a lot, so what’s hilarious about my cottage.

I pay them and they leave with their buckets and
brooms, I make the bed, green sheets with large
flowers on, fresh from the laundry too, will go to
bed early; my home sighs and sinks back to itself.