one night in London
I saw the ghost of a child
behind my old house
*
dressed all in white
from another century
in the basement well
*
I watched a while
– she was absorbed in herself –
diffusing through light
*
a veil of darkness
her little body lit up
void translucent shades –
*
face expressionless,
quite absent, as if her spirit
had drained her hereness
*
flowing past in light
like the sun’s in moony night
shining chimera –
*
I could not read her
state nor story from her looks:
she stayed still, mute, slight,
*
radiating calm
acceptance between us. I waved –
then went up to bed.
*
**
*
next night, another
ghost came through the bathroom wall
into the sitting room
*
whilst I sat talking
with my ex-girlfriend’s mother
sure I was mad, drunk
*
visions and sirens
called me, but maybe it was
the ghost of our love
*
the evening after
I’d seen that blank ghost daughter
in not to be light.
*
***
*
Omm
freddie omm’s Sicilian Haiku will be published by Mad Bear Books in 2021.
This poem about ghosts sounds a strong personal chord in my breast. Lovely light evocations of beauty past, things that might be heavy, sorrowful, treated with a light fresh elegant solicitude, cool yet caring.
Music! Dancing! Drinking! Mind expanding! Cheyne Walk! Chelsea! Oh, it revives memories of past places as spirits revitalising our senses. Ghosts! Most of us sense they are real and here and in the borderlands of Chelsea they clamour especially closely thronging at the sidelines of the mundane as people on pavements passed by the busy roar of traffic.
I lived close to here in the late eighties, early nineties, and often passed this corner where Edith Grove debouches onto the Thames. Tall high-rise red brick towers neighbour this stately Victorian row overlooking the river and its huddled cluster of houseboats.
Eminent literary and artistic ghosts and footsteps abound, as you write:
“flowing past in light/like the sun’s in moony night/shining chimera – ”
When you wrote so thrillingly about 1989 and the Summer of Love, 28 years on, you also stirred in this young/old hippie chick/crone a bewitching Recognition of a kindred spirit, a soul shared across time and space. Rebirth:
“our summer of love/high on hope, hardcore uproar/remixing our lives”
Yes! Let’s remix our lives!
This poem plays similar remixing tricks, of Recognition, of Rebirth, as though seeing oneself as a ghost from the future. Will we too be seen like that, centuries to come? Is it real? Is it really real, Freddie?
Thank you for this, Davina, and yes, this is surely true and real.
I saw the ghost of a child in the left corner of the basement well behind my flat on the ground floor, looking from the rear bedroom window. I’d come back late from work and was tired and ready for bed.
I sensed that this was a significant revelatory moment opening up a new perspective on existence. She was dressed in a white Victorian muslin gown, nightdress or chemise (I’m not sure about the precise terminology but it covered her body). I sensed she sensed me, though she was looking slightly away, into the basement flat beneath me.
I watched for a while, intensely aware, and sensing a strange intrusiveness on my part.
The vibe she gave off (and the atmosphere of the scene as a whole) was neutral, not hostile; it all seemed poised on some sort of cusp. Yet I was extrinsic and felt as one does when stumbling into a revealing situation involving others where one is de trop. Aside from my witnessing it, I had no part in whatever was going on down there. I remember wondering whether she were scared or threatened by something unseen, but I sensed her accepting with no fear. So I was a watcher, if not a voyeur, with all that implies when one is (being) seen as well as seeing.
My presence was maybe blocking the flow below, so I raised my hand in recognition, drew the curtain, and went up to bed.
Haunting. Unsettling.
This comes from a deep place.
I love it.
Thank you, Scarlett.