I recently moved back to a college town I lived in last school year. It's good to be back, really good to be back, but this place is a ghost town of memories. This poem doesn't really have much to do with my move, but the lines "...the rain / Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh / Upon the glass and listen for reply" keep running through my mind. So tonight, I give you a little Millay. I tend to turn to her when I am, as Wordsworth would describe, "in vacant or in pensive mood."
Edna St. Vincent Millay
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
2 comments:
I just found your blog today... Its brilliant!
Loved this poem and especially those very same lines..
Thanks for this blog... I very much enjoy it.. :)
That is heartbreaking. I found this looking for the inspiration of the song Ghosts In The Rain written by Ruth Angell and Ashley Hutchings, performed by the Rainbow Chasers off their album Some Colours Fly. Check out if you have Spotify. Beautiful. But this poem chokes me up, especially the last two lines. I've got a scar going back almost 30 years and when lines like these do this to me, then it's powerfull stuff indeed.
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