My Life in the Land of Ghosts

In this land of ghosts I met a man with blue eyes

They told me this would happen, in the stars, 

Or when I saw in myself as the idea of witch

Living with the quieter souls in the monastery

His eyes are illumined from within and they burn 

With pain, and sorrow, and love and passion.

I ask myself, do they burn for me or the idea of me

As a woman, a cipher, a love which cannot be born?

This blue-eyed ghost wants to touch me, as though

A doll, dress me in pretty things and make me bend

He does not love me but cannot live in pain. And

So, reaching out, he says my skin is soft and my lips pure.

In this land of ghosts where stones are painted white

And sheep bleached in sun and rain stand immobile

On hill and field, his blue eyes took me to mountains

And to the trees. This oak is alive, he says, and feeling 

The bark, I felt its life-force move like blood and breath

On one side sun and the other moss, so now I will

Never lose myself, or others, in this ghosted land

As I watch him become this tree or his eyes become

As sky or water. Here the air is damp and cool

And my eyes do not close in dust or sand or wind.

His are open as he leads me, with hands that cover mine,

Through a land of words I do not know, have never heard

He sings these words alive, so that passing each hill

And mound, each house and road, there is a song or

Story; the world is sprung anew, as if through his

Blue eyes, I begin to see the world anew.

GILES SUTHERLAND