The Black Christ, & other poems

Chapter 42: Ghosts

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About This Book

A debut collection of formally polished poems that moves between intimate lyric and public meditation, exploring love, youth, mortality, faith, and racial identity. The poet employs sonnets and varied forms, classical and Christian imagery, and musical rhythms to examine personal feeling and communal injustice, sometimes elegiac, sometimes celebratory. Several pieces dramatize spiritual questioning and the cost of social servitude, while others reflect on beauty, art, and the paradoxes of pride and poverty. The result is a compact sequence blending technical restraint with vivid metaphor and moral concern.

Ghosts

Breast under breast when you shall lie

With him who in my place

Bends over you with flashing eye

And ever nearing face;

Hand fast in hand when you shall tread

With him the springing ways

Of love from me inherited

After my little phase;

Be not surprised if suddenly

The couch or air confound

Your ravished ears upbraidingly,

And silence turn to sound.

But never let it trouble you,

Or cost you one caress;

Ghosts are soon sent with a word or two

Back to their loneliness.