ghosts

mikie on the last day of the viewforth flat...

the contents of another, small, batch of scans resurrecting the day, this one catching something of the moment as stored in my memory, vague melancholy wound into the awareness that an era is ending... the two of us and a camera, the whispers of memories, faces and voices which over the years had left their imprints upon this place, stretching out into the unmapped future...  there, upon this day the wild cacophony of contradictions, the song of his memory, a smile at the knowledge that he'd choose a JD and coke rather than a glass of muscatel, the sound of his voice undimmed by the passage and erosions of the years...



from  All Souls Night

Midnight has come and the great Christ Church bell
And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls’ Night.
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost’s right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.

I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind’s pondering,
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock...

W.B. Yeats