Adrienne Rich — What Ghosts Can Say

When Harry Wylie saw his father's ghost As bearded and immense as once in life Bending above his bed long after midnight He screamed and gripped the corner of the pillow Till aunts came hurrying white in dressing gowns To say it was a dream. He knew they lied. The smell of his father's leather riding crop And stale tobacco stayed to prove it to him Why should there stay such tokens of a ghost If not to prove it came on serious business? His father always had meant serious business But never so wholly in his look and gesture As when he beat the boy's uncovered thighs Calmly and resolutely, at an hour When Harry never had been awake before. The man who could choose that single hour of night Had in him the ingredients of a ghost; Mortality would quail at such a man. An older Harry lost his childish notion and only sometimes wondered if events Could ech othus long after in a dream If so, it surely meant they had a meaning. But why the actual punishment had fallen, For what offense of boyhood, he could try For years and not unearth. What ghosts can say-- Even the ghosts of fathers--comes obscurely. What if the terror stays without the meaning?