Her Ghost Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai
Her Ghost
Hear me!
The wind obeys me
Flatters my whims.
Yet you hear me
Not.
You only fear me.
Now
I have no longer
Fear of ageing
Before me
The line is straight
And ever-extending.
I own not
Nor can I.
I have no power.
Yet to you
If I will so
I will appear.
Calculate that.
You see me.
Bones all
And rattling
And a little dust.
You see: I
I will not change
Never be a handsome man
A youth
These are attacked by age
Like withering flowers.
And me,
I am not attacked by Ageing.
I am free of Disease and Agony
Of Death.
In to the mass universe
Where I view
There is always give and
Take.
There's a giving
There's taking
Albeit
Imperceptible.
And now
The time be come
For me
To revert
To thin smoke
Among yon mists.
I go.
Most often where
I go
There's snow
And tempest
At the doors
And windows.
So
You will not
Venture out
And see me
By your window
Or your door.
No.
No.
No.
I fear not courts.
I am free
From all chains
All restrictions.
I am free
From inhibitions
From prejudices
I see
Not as you see
I think
Not as you think.
I crossed the line
With other ghosts
And shrouds
The line
You have not crossed
As yet.
Adieux!
Ciao!
Bye!
You see:
I am so polite.
I go.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/24/2024 6:36:32 AM # 1.0.0.1119
I can't if the speaker is dealing with his own eventual death, or of this is a persona poem in which someone already dead speaks about her experience. It's just a detail you could clarify in a sentence, it doesn't really matter. I read the poem, with each possibility and the poem was moving in both situations. What distinguishes it is the language, sometimes eloquent, sometimes ironic, always moving. It embodies the kind of courage many of us gain in old age, when our earlier fear of death is overcome not through heroic posturing or philosophical breakthrough in understanding. No, it is a gradual, life long reconciliation with death, which we stop fearing and incorporate into our experience of life as yet another rite of passage, which should be no more scary than birth or confirmation. And then we can die with the same values by which we lived and not scramble for some last minute belief system we did not live by. Integrity will thus characterize our end. Amen to that.