Ghosts

Thick curtains closed and a knee-knocking table.

That tall androgynous one, half entranced,

who speaks in an ersatz voice, surely knows

that off-duty ghosts prefer daylight?

Once the ghost of Goethe spoke for them all:

'More light!' Ghosts are the colour of air. They like

lampposts that blaze in the streets of morning.

They grin in sunbeams where their small dust shows.

But at night they are hellishly employed

by us: have no leisure to haunt olde inns,

to peacock-screech in Highgate Cemetery

or rap tables. We rarely cease from dreaming.

We moan in sleep and they rush from the wings.

We summon through trap-doors a non-union cast.

Weeping they scurry from dream to dream.

We produce them, give them impossible scripts.