Ghosts of Desire

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Ghosts of Desire

Poem — An Invocation to The Master #80

At midnight hour marked by a mechanical limb
At the doorstep of sleep’s retreat I paused,
For strange shapes in the air were outlined,
Forms familiar from times now grown dumb.

I knew these yet couldn’t recollect names
For my memory’s stores have been robbed,
Yet by heart the heavings were remembered,
Ghosts of desire slain making new acquaintance.

I saw the procession pass in mournful silence,
Many a happy face and eyes hope filled,
Passion swollen hearts and adamant mind
Were all resolved to melancholic grievance.

I strained my ears to hear their moving lips,
A somber chorus grew like a birthing echo,
“We are past’s seeds you now blithely forego,
Who can in these cycles now embody us?

Desire doth live in twilight spaces of heart
Like a flower blooming in a garden patch,
A watering care and pruning must match
The seed that conducts the flower’s art.

But thou, vain traveller, forsaking us
Hath ventured into some realm absolved
Of life and passions making life remembered,
Now thou art but a ghost that breathes.

Make answer thou, O bodied apparition,
Speak for us thy abandoned voices,
Born as thy brood but now mere orphans,
Bequeathed to doom and damnation.”

The voice dwindled like a dying ripple,
A silence was in the room, mutely brooding.
My heart turned heavenward beseeching,
“Hearest Thou the lament and wail,

Of parts that atrophy, impulses near extinct,
Like winds that lack lung teasing sails
Or sky that lends not anchoring stars,
My navigations are all now circumvent.

An inconsequence inks life’s log book,
No shoreline of purpose guides my gaze,
Nor a roving light from hope’s lighthouse
Tugs my will’s rudder for direction’s sake.

Oh leave me not like a half-done edifice,
The column part-smooth, rest mere rock.
Thy outline in me is only a draft’s make
Am many revisions away from Thy fullness.

My paltry assembly bows to you O Sire,
Grant my all Thy realising fire.”