GHOST STORY

Returning from the grove of grass and stone,
Grievers gone away, I am left alone
To wander these cold rooms broken-hearted,
Searching for the soul newly departed.
Your scent is everywhere, like morning dew;
As fresh as ever, unmistakeably you.

The house is empty now – less like a home –
With all life gone, waiting more like a tomb.

And how will I bear so heavy a cross?
How to rise above such deep, aching loss?

But in the garden, I think I see you
Standing by the trees, still as a statue.
Then you turn, pale, tearful; begin to walk
Towards me; but now when I try to talk,
You shake your head and pass through me blindly,
And wander into the house behind me.

The day is done, the summer sun has shone.
Dusk fades down. Now even your scent is gone.


(2006)


As the title suggests, this poem is a fiction. It did, however, arise from an actual funeral from which I had returned: that of my ex-wife’s grandmother. I had been very fond of Granny Dolly who was buried in the small churchyard of the village where she had lived.

But this poem is not about Granny Dolly. I had stood in our garden thinking over the funeral that evening and listening to the rustling of the leaves, when an uncanny impulse made me wonder whether I was there at all.

I wrote a very vague outline of the poem shortly after but didn’t finish it for several years. That shake of the head towards the end came, I’m sure, floating up through my subconscious, from the red-hooded dwarf that murders the character played by Donald Sutherland at the climax of the film ‘Don’t Look Now’. He’s so sure the figure in red that he’s been pursuing through the dark, foggy backstreets of Venice is the ghost of his recently drowned daughter, but when the dwarf turns to finally reveal herself, she shakes her head before delivering a terrible coup de grace...

The photograph of Lisa is much more recent than the actual poem but it only occurred to me the other day that it might be the right image to go with the poem.