Three Poems

Augustus J.C. Hare Considers Another Ghost Story

The plush of these huge trees sags with heat
that weighs more than their tonnage of water.
And the grasshopper shall be a burden,
because man goeth to his long home.
Ladies and gentlemen talk in the flocked light,
make fresh acquaintance with their solitary lives.

It was his mother who was buried alive
and lived for many years afterwards.
It was known she had been put into her coffin
with a very valuable ring upon her finger,

Ah, these old country palaces are choked with mother,
the furious rustling of aunts, adopted, unadopted,
their close-print faces torn from family bibles.
The child who skitters up steps as fast as the flowers
and is whipped for it, talks of the value of rings,
...