GHOSTS GATHERING
You hear no bones click, see no shaken shroud.
Though no tombs grin, you feel ghosts gathering. Crowd
On pitiful crowd of small dead singing men
Tread the sure earth they feebly hymned; again
With fleshless hand seize unswayed grass. They seize
Insensitive flowers which bend not. Through gross trees
They sift. Nothing withstands them. Nothing knows
Them nor the songs they sang, their busy woes.
‘Hence from these ingrate things! To the towns!’ they weep,
(If ghosts have tears). You think a wrinkled heap
Of leaves heaved, or a wing stirred, less than this.
Some chance on the midnight cities. Others miss
The few faint lights, thin voices. Wretched these
Doomed to beat long the windy vacancies!
Some mourn through forlorn towns. They prowl and seek
—What seek they? Who knows them? If branches creak
And leaves flap and slow women ply their trade,
Those all are living things, but these are dead,