If Ghosts Could Lie Poem by David Lewis Paget

He stood at the end of the pier that day
In hopes that they’d ask him on,
But Marilyn had just sailed away
With his elder brother, John.
He stood and scoured the horizon till
The sun went down in the west,
Then turned and wended his way back home
Though he’d get but little rest.

He tossed and turned for an hour or so
But he couldn’t get to sleep,
Then crept on out of his bed, he thought
He might take a little peep,
For out of his bedroom window there
The sea shone under the Moon,
The surface calm as a millpond as
He fell back into his room.

And his dreams that night were turbid dreams,
Obscured like a murky pond,
Where he couldn’t see the half of it
Viewed through the slough of despond,
Had he lost the only love he had,
And the brother he loved so well?
The morning dawned on a sudden storm,
And the sea, with a giant swell.

There wasn’t a sail on the sea that day,
There wasn’t a boat at all,
The yacht was found all smashed around
The end of the stone sea wall.
They said there wasn’t a soul aboard
Whoever there’d been was gone,
He didn’t know who he mourned the most,
His Marilyn, or his John.

John came to him in his sleep that night
With his eyes all brimming with tears,
‘I shouldn’t have taken her out, despite
I’d loved the woman for years.
But don’t blame her, it was only me,
For she made it plain that day,
She’d only come for a friendly sail,
And then she pushed me away.’

And Marilyn came to his dream as well
With the seaweed caught in her hair,
‘I shouldn’t have gone with your brother John,
Now I’m lost beyond despair.
He said you’d come, but he sailed away,
Said, ‘just a bit of fun, ’
But now I weep in the ocean’s deep,
It’s the end for everyone.’

They found the bodies beyond the pier,
They were floating, hand in hand,
And when they got them ashore they found
That she wore John’s wedding band.
They never appeared in his dreams again
And he thought it just as well,
If ghosts could lie, he at least could cry
As he wished them both in hell.

4 April 2015