All Hallows (II)

poem

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I am not haunted like my neighbors are

Who have an old ghost to trouble them,

Some distant cousin,

They told me, who died

At quarter past eleven, on her wedding night.

They hear her whispering at sunset

And see her fingers in the fading light —

Chalky, grasping, gentle things

Reaching for the piano keys.

My house is empty

My nights are solitary

I have no lady all in white, no haunted mirror

To show me any other face, no other voices

Disturb me in the night; my halls are white and grey and blank

(My kin were not the haunting kind, and all of them are gone).

I have walked a thousand soundless soulless streets

And met nothing at the end of them:

My nights are silent

Empty, vacant, bare;

O God grant me a ghost

My house is full of nothing but myself;

be merciful, O God

Give me another shadow and a voice

God grant me a ghost.

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