UNTIL I LOST YOU

a collection of poems and writings about the ghosts that haunt us

Ghosts are a metaphor for memory and rememberance and metaphorically connect our world to the world we cannot know about. Leslie What

THE GHOST

THE GHOSTTHE GHOSTCHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Like angels with wild beast’s eyes I shall return to your bedroom And silently glide toward you With the shadows of the night;

And, dark beauty, I shall give you Kisses cold as the moon And the caresses of a snake That crawls around a grave.

When the livid morning comes, You’ll find my place empty, And it will be cold there till night.

I wish to hold sway over Your life and youth by fear, As others do by tenderness.

THE LAWN

IS PRESSED BY UNSEEN FEET, AND GHOSTS RETURN

GENTLY AT TWILIGHT, GENTLY GO AT DAWN,

THE SAD INTANGIBLE WHO GRIEVE AND YEARN.

THE LAWN

IS PRESSED BY UNSEEN FEET, AND GHOSTS RETURN

GENTLY AT TWILIGHT, GENTLY GO AT DAWN,

THE SAD INTANGIBLE WHO GRIEVE AND YEARN.

T.S. Eliot, To Walter de la Mare

From Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

BE HOLE, BE DUST, BE DREAM, BE WIND/BE NIGHT, BE DARK, BE WISH, BE MIND/NOW SLIP, NOW SLIDE, NOW MOVE UNSEEN/ ABOVE, BENEATH, BETWIXT, BETWEEN.

TOM CLARK

THE DOMESTIC LIFE OF GHOSTS

Whoso list to haunt could do worse than to Obtain the license, get the picture.Spook finders must find spooks to put the face,Name and space coordinates together.What is kept in the mind perimeterRetains a wild autonomy through fate.

I will retreat to the precorporate.Let fate have what is fate’s and allowThis spirit to slip through time’s difficultNets with the devious fingers ofA wild wind, while I run along behind.

Thy soul shall find itself alone‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;Not one, of all the crowd, to pryInto thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,Which is not loneliness-for thenThe spirits of the dead, who stoodIn life before thee, are againIn death around thee, and their willShall overshadow thee; be still.

SPIRITS OF THEDEADEDGAR ALLAN POE

The night, though clear, shall frown,And the stars shall not look downFrom their high thrones in the HeavenWith light like hope to mortals given,But their red orbs, without beam,To thy weariness shall seemAs a burning and a feverWhich would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,Now are visions ne’er to vanish;From thy spirit shall they passNo more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,And the mist upon the hillShadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,Is a symbol and a token.How it hangs upon the trees,A mystery of mysteries!

‘WHO KNOCKS?’‘I, who was beautiful Beyond all dreams to restore, I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither, And knock on the door.’

‘WHO SPEAKS?’‘I -- once was my speech Sweet as the bird’s on the air, When echo lurks by the waters to heed; ‘Tis I speak thee fair.’

GHOST Walter de la Mare

‘DARK IS THE HOUR!’‘Aye, and cold.’ ‘Lone is my house.’ ‘Ah, but mine? ‘ ‘Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain.’ ‘Long dead these to thine.’

SILENCE.Still faint on the porch Brake the flames of the stars. In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand Over keys, bolts, and bars.

A FACE PEERED. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast sorrow was there -- The sweet cheat gone.

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him knowThat whither his fancy sets him wandering I, too, alertly go? –Hover and hover a few feet from him Just as I used to do,But cannot answer the words he lifts me – Only listen thereto!

When I could answer he did not say them: When I could let him knowHow I would like to join in his journeys Seldom he wished to go.Now that he goes and wants me with him More than he used to do,Never he sees my faithful phantom Though he speaks thereto.

THE HAUNTER

THE HAUNTER

Yes, I companion him to places Only dreamers know,Where the shy hares print long paces, Where the night rooks go;Into old aisles where the past is all to him, Close as his shade can do, Always lacking the power to call to him, Near as I reach thereto!

What a good haunter I am, O tell him, Quickly make him knowIf he but sigh since my loss befell him Straight to his side I go.Tell him a faithful one is doing All that love can doStill his path my be worth pursuing, And to bring peace thereto.

THOMAS HARDY

FOR WHO CAN WONDER THAT MAN SHOULD FEEL A

VAGUE BELIEF IN TALES OF DISEMBODIED SPIRITS

WANDERING THROUGH THOSE PLACES IN WHICH THEY

ONCE DEARLY AFFECTED, WHEN HE HIMSELF, SCARCELY

LESS SEPARATED FROM FROM HIS WORLD THAN THEY,

IS FOR EVER LINGERING UPON PAST EMOTIONS AND

BYGONE TIMES, AND HOVERING, THE GHOST OF HIS

FORMER SELF, ABOUT THE PLACES AND PEOPLE THAT

WARMED HIS HEART OF OLD?

Charles DickensMaster Humphrey’s Clock

I look for ghosts; but

from “The Affliction of Margaret” by William Wordsworth

none will force Their way to me:

‘tis falsely saidThat there was ever intercourseBetween the living and the dead;

For, surely, then I should have sightOf him I wait for day and night,

With love and longings infinite.

from “The Affliction of Margaret” by William Wordsworth

NOW IT IS THE TIME OF NIGHT

THAT THE GRAVES, ALL GAPING WIDE,

EVERYONE LETS FORTH HIS SPRITE

IN THE CHURCH-WAY PATHS TO GLIDE

From A Midsummer Night’s DreamWilliam Shakespeare

NOW IT IS THE TIME OF NIGHT

THAT THE GRAVES, ALL GAPING WIDE,

EVERYONE LETS FORTH HIS SPRITE

IN THE CHURCH-WAY PATHS TO GLIDE

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and spedThrough many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuingHopes of high talk with the departed dead.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”

I dwell in a lonely house I know That vanished many a summer ago, And left no trace but the cellar walls, And a cellar in which the daylight falls, And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield The woods come back to the mowing field; The orchard tree has grown one copse Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops; The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart In that vanished abode there far apart On that disused and forgotten road That has no dust-bath now for the toad. Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

GHOSTHOUSEROBERT FROST

The whippoorwill is coming to shout And hush and cluck and flutter about: I hear him begin far enough away Full many a time to say his say Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star. I know not who these mute folk are Who share the unlit place with me-- Those stones out under the low-limbed tree Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad, Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,-- With none among them that ever sings, And yet, in view of how many things, As sweet companions as might be had.

the ghosts swarm.they speak as one person. eachloves you. eachhas left something undone.

the ghosts swarm.they speak as one person. eachloves you. eachhas left something undone.

“unbidden”rae armantrout

from

Yesterday, upon the stair,I met a man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayI wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at threeThe man was waiting there for meBut when I looked around the hallI couldn’t see him there at all!Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stairA little man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayOh, how I wish he’d go away

ANTIGONISHHUGHES MEARNS

Yesterday, upon the stair,I met a man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayI wish, I wish he’d go away...

When I came home last night at threeThe man was waiting there for meBut when I looked around the hallI couldn’t see him there at all!Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stairA little man who wasn’t thereHe wasn’t there again todayOh, how I wish he’d go away

ANTIGONISHHUGHES MEARNS

It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the creation of the world,

and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any

person appearing after death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.

Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson

When people talk of Ghosts I don’t mention the Apparition by which I am

haunted, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or

spectre, so familiar, so like myself, which lurks in the plate glass of shop

windows, or leaps out of mirrors.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for

haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.

Elizabeth Bowen, preface to The Second Ghost Book

It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on

surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a no-

ble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?

Algernon H Blackwood

ALL HEART THEY LIVE, ALL HEAD, ALL EYE, ALL EAR,ALL INTELLECT, ALL SENSE, AND AS THEY PLEASETHEY LIMB THEMSELVES, AND COLOUR, SHAPE, OR SIZE,ASSUME, AS LIKES THEM BEST, CONDENSE OR RARE.

ALL HEART THEY LIVE, ALL HEAD, ALL EYE, ALL EAR,ALL INTELLECT, ALL SENSE, AND AS THEY PLEASETHEY LIMB THEMSELVES, AND COLOUR, SHAPE, OR SIZE,ASSUME, AS LIKES THEM BEST, CONDENSE OR RARE.

John MiltonParadise Lost

They say that shadows of deceased ghosts Do haunt the houses and the graves about, Of such whose life’s lamp went untimely out, Delighting still in their forsaken hosts.

“They say that shadows of deceased ghosts” Joshua Sylvester

All houses wherein men have lived and diedAre haunted houses. Through the open doorsThe harmless phantoms on their errands glide,With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,Along the passages they come and go,Impalpable impressions on the air,A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hostsInvited; the illuminated hallIs thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot seeThe forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;He but perceives what is; while unto meAll that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;Owners and occupants of earlier datesFrom graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

HAUNTED HOUSES

The spirit-world around this world of senseFloats like an atmosphere, and everywhereWafts through these earthly mists and vapours denseA vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoiseBy opposite attractions and desires;The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jarOf earthly wants and aspirations high,Come from the influence of an unseen starAn undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloudThrows o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowdInto the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descendsA bridge of light, connecting it with this,O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

HAUNTED HOUSES HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS OR DEVILSUNTIL I LOST YOU

I DIDN’T BELIEVE IN GHOSTS OR DEVILSUNTIL I LOST YOU

the haunting ao-oa

BUT CONTINUED TO FEEL YOU.

I didn’t use to believe in ghosts, but I was trained to talk to them. My mother reminded me many times that I had the gift. It all stemmed from a lie I told when I was four. The way my mother remembered it, I refused to get ready for bed one night, claiming there was a ghost in the bathroom. She was delighted to learn I was a spirit medium.

Thereafter, she questioned anything unusual—a sudden gust of wind, a vase that fell and shattered, she would ask me, “She here?” She meant my grandmother.

When I was a child, my mother told me that my grandmother died in great agony after she accidentally ate too much opium. My mother was nine years old when she watched this happen.

When I was 14, my older brother was stricken with a brain tumor. My mother begged me to ask my grandmother to save him. When he died, she asked me to talk to him as well. “I don’t know how,” I protested. When my father died of a brain tumor six months after my brother, she made me use a Ouija board. She wanted to know if they still loved her? I spelled out the answer I knew she wanted to hear: Yes. Always.

SAYING THANKS TO MY GHOSTSAMY TAN

When I became a fiction writer in my 30s, I wrote a story about a woman who killed herself eating too much opium. After my mother read a draft of that story, she had tears in her eyes. Now she had proof: my grandmother had talked to me and told me her true story. How else could I have known my grandmother had not died by accident but with the fury of suicide? She asked me, “She here now?” I answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

Over the years, I have included other details in my writing I could not possibly have known on my own: a place, a character, a song. I have come to feel differently about my ghostwriters. Sometimes their clues have come so plentifully they’ve made me laugh like a child who can’t open birthday presents fast enough. I must say thanks, not to blind luck but to my ghosts.

Ten years ago, I clearly saw a ghost and she talked to me. It was my mother. She had died just 24 hours before. Her face was ten times larger than life, in the form of a moving, pulsing hologram of sparkling lights. My mother was laughing at my surprise. She drew closer and when she reached me, I felt as if I had been physically punched in the chest. It took my breath away and filled me with something absolute: love, but also joy and peace—and with that, understanding that love and joy and peace are all the same thing. Joy comes from love. Peace comes from love. “Now you know,” my mother said.

I believe in ghosts. Whenever I want, they will always be there: my mother, my grandmother, my ghosts.

GHOSTS! I ALMOST THINK WE ARE ALL OF US GHOSTS. IT IS NOT ONLY WHAT WE H AV E I N H E R I T E D F R O M OUR FATHER AND MOTHER THAT ‘WALKS’ IN US . IT I S A L L S O R T S O F D E A D IDEAS, AND LIFELESS OLD BEL IEFS , AND SO FORTH. THEY HAVE NO VITAL ITY, B U T T H E Y C L I N G T O U S ALL THE SAME, AND WE CANNOT SHAKE THEM OFF.

GHOSTS! I ALMOST THINK WE ARE ALL OF US GHOSTS. IT IS NOT ONLY WHAT WE H AV E I N H E R I T E D F R O M OUR FATHER AND MOTHER THAT ‘WALKS’ IN US . IT I S A L L S O R T S O F D E A D IDEAS, AND LIFELESS OLD BEL IEFS , AND SO FORTH. THEY HAVE NO VITAL ITY, B U T T H E Y C L I N G T O U S ALL THE SAME, AND WE CANNOT SHAKE THEM OFF. Henrik Ibsen

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

From “The Canterville Ghost”Oscar Wilde

If not for flesh’s pretty paint, we’re just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That’s why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It’s the fact they don’t know they’re dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you’re a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.

If not for flesh’s pretty paint, we’re just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That’s why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It’s the fact they don’t know they’re dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you’re a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.

“Ghost in the Land of Skeletons” Christopher Kennedy

We never saw the ghost, though we knew he was there—we knew from the raindrops tapping on the eaves.We never saw him, and we didn’t care.

Each day, new sunshine tumbled through the air;evenings, the moonlight rustled in the dark leaves.We never saw the ghost, though: he was there,

if ever, when the wind tousled our hairand prickled goosebumps up and down thin sleeves;we never saw him. And we didn’t care

GHOST VILLANELLEDAN LECHAY

GHOST VILLANELLEDAN LECHAY

to step outside our room at night, or dareclick off the nightlight: call it fear of thieves.We never saw the ghost, though he was there

in sunlit dustmotes drifting anywhere,in light-and-shadow, such as the moon weaves.We never saw him, though, and didn’t care,

until at last we saw him everywhere.We told nobody. Everyone believeswe never saw the ghost (if he was there),we never saw him and we didn’t care.

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.

H. Rider HaggardKing Solomon’s Mines