You can shuffle and scuffle and scold, <br />You can rattle the knockers and knobs, <br />Or batter the doorsteps with buckets of gold <br />Till the Deputy-Governor sobs. <br />You can sneak up a suitable plank <br />In a frantic endeavor to see— <br />But what do they do in the Commonwealth Bank <br />When the Big Door bangs at Three? <br /> <br />Listen in the cellars, listen in the vaults, <br />Can’t you hear the tellers turning somersaults? <br />Can’t you hear the spectres of inspectors and directors <br />Dancing with the phantoms in a Dead Man’s Waltz? <br />Some are ghosts of nabobs, poverty and stray bobs, <br />Midas and his mistress, Mammon and his wife; <br />Other ones are sentries, guarding double entries, <br />Long-forgotten, double-dealing, troubled double-life. <br />Down among the pass-books, money lent and spent, <br />Down among the forests of the Four Per Cent., <br />Where the ledgers meet and moulder, and the overdrafts grow older, <br />And the phantoms shrug a shoulder when you ask ’em for the rent. <br /> <br />They are bogies of Grandfather’s cheques, <br />They are spectres of buried accounts, <br />They are crinoline sweethearts with pearls on their necks, <br />Demanding enormous amounts. <br />They are payment for suppers and flowers, <br />For diamonds to banish a tear, <br />For sweet, pretty ladies in opulent hours . . . <br />And tombstones . . . and bailiffs . . . and beer . . . <br /> <br />Down in the bowels of the bank, the ledgers lie rank upon rank, <br />The debts of the ages come out of their pages, <br />The bones of old loans creak and clank— <br />Oh, if you could peep through the door <br />To day at a Quarter Past Four, <br />You’d find all the ghosts at their usual posts, <br />And you wouldn’t sign cheques any more!<br /><br />Kenneth Slessor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-a-c-with-ghosts/
