When we call the dead to us
We hear them, in the other room,
Cease their conversation and attend:
Or so they did, now we have forgot
Their faces, and they weary of us;
Half-sick of beating hearts, they do not come
And we sit alone. Only night steals in
And suffocates the candles one by one;
It is no comfort
To be alone, unheard, forgotten:
Warily now the dead watch us
From behind the mirror
Unseen, undistinguished,
From behind a single shapeless face.
The Journal is a section where I post weekly poems responding to Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Here’s last week’s edition:
