'Pure stardust, all of them.' Photo: Ravi Patel / Unsplash.
The Christmas ghosts
'The Christmas ghosts' by Roger Iredale
In the keenest of winter-black air I hear them
march up East and Manor Streets: Basil
with his barrow cock-eyed over sliced up
tree stumps; Megan, a gin glass tipped
across her breast; balding Bertrand haughty
in his black hat tilted to the sweep
of ragged winds.
Others edge from ginnels, gardens, gateways
or file through the night air silently as ghosts
edging to the hollow glow of streetlights.
They come to hear those old familiar words
of comfort tolling out the journeys made
by others long before we gathered breath
or worshipped stars.
They drift through cameos of lamplight ringed
in monochrome with gaslight rainbows, treading
to the rhythm of the stars, listening for the distant
warmth of human voices raised in sing-song
stories of past legends, spirits of the desert
and the wise kings coming out of nowhere.
Pure stardust, all of them.
That dust lingers on the neat, the chiselled
blocks of hamstone in the churchyard walls
beside the lych-gate’s guillotine that cuts
us off from them. We pass with dogs
and faded reverence, glancing sometimes
at their names in stone.
They are not us: living in the time-warp
of our memories, they inhabit other years
no longer ours. For them, the past
is present, and the present no time.
We watch with fondness as they come to us
still gathered, still in song.
