Ghosts

Ghosts

   Between two shafts in a hole, 

in a mazey brown brook shifted 

away from our work, we see 

ourselves mirrored and startle 

at us colorless. Still, we show

long noses stoppsy by smoke

as kilns blaze outside, towers 

lit by orange flames, then rinsed 

by showers, black juice and tan 

sprinkles gushing beside sweat

where we dipped to shovel deeper

for ore. Empty lunch pails at our

sides, the litters, freighted, carry

us where we failed. No one's left

for our kin when we fall to no new

heaven. But wishing their god were 

gentle, they stoop to rails for wine

then wish our lives weren't erased.

Yet that won't stop the choir's dirge, 

or our bones cremated to fertilizer, 

or grow the wheat, grind the flour 

or buy priests' tiny wafers. We can't 

chant beside them, voiceless, or flap 

a dance to death. No cards in dark 

saloons will ease us again. Though,

now, no gullies lurk. We'll never 

know even wars' bombs that might 

raise poppy on shirts, yet stir us less 

than seam sent blasts. Our spirits

dream a sailor's mare: waves o'green 

horses galloping us away, greenest

of waves, burning amber escaped

from cracks, crevices we never see:

till squib turns torch, star, comet, 

moonlike blaze to light us for swains. 

[chorus]