Will Barber - You Are Like a Ghost

You: you are like a ghost
Fluttering, pensive, in my memory,
Skirting the well-lighted rooms in which I read.

You: you are like a ghost;
I feel you inhabit
Those rooms where I must no longer go.

How events mock one, I am tempted to say.
You: you would smile ironically,
Your smile would be ghostly in your violet rooms.

You: you are life, you are death,
I always have to follow,
Thought I sometimes do not know the way to go;

You must not ask me any more,
I must not hear you any more
Unless you want me to....

You: you are my ghost,
My violet phantom,
My rumor, my regret.


1976

Will Barber

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-are-like-a-ghost/