balladeer of moons
174,126 poems read
Ghost Love
GHOST LOVE
As the drumming night longs to tear
Itself away from dream and siege,
I longed to show her old museums.
All of prehistoric cold is her.
Her dress had no wrinkles.
The way her cheek curved
And how the words bloomed on her lips,
She might have been God’s own brake.
She looked something like sorrow
In that dress. With her burning hair,
She could have gone for a stroll on a battlefield
When enemy hunger grew well beyond human.
I would invite eccentric guests to the museum,
Hoping that in these rooms of the dead
Another could relive her walk, her ways.
They belong to dreams. The rooms cry like rubble.
She was always grey in my arms.
Strong imagining dies in its own delirium,
As haunts drag back the old sinister news
That nothing whatever can begin.
I always gave bad news to myself
And kept it close to me and captive.
It was never much more than a shiver, or
A height of handkerchief drooping in my pocket.
My prayers kept her going until
Nothing more could be taken away from nothing.
I don’t like leaving things behind.
Were I a lantern, I’d put out myself.