When the windowpane fills with light
	 Sepulchral as a ghastly sail
	 Full of dead wind that will not fail
Despite the dark, despite the night,

And skin and breath half swell with sweat--
	  Though in itself that has not been
	  My own experience of sin--
Some knot inside the soul relents....

There in the insistent mist
	 A burning mast in a gull-grey shroud
	 Churns water and divides the cloud
And rides the tide as I did insist.

Be you friend or be you fear,
	 Palely limber in the halflight,
	 Almost fiction in false midnight,
Stand pale beside my bed, be near.

What you have to say, I would hear
	 Who, rash and rough in life before,
	 Sent from out this very door
Your solider emissary.

Wait, ghost, do not fade or fail!
	 What you speak I will not unsay
	 But hold in holy memory;
I would hear, would feel, your tale.

                                                        Next>>

Poems in pieces

by