Ghost House — Robert Frost

I Dwell in a lonely house I know

That vanished many a summer ago,

And left no trace but the cellar walls,

And a cellar in which the daylight falls,

And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield

The woods come back to the mowing field;

The orchard tree has grown one copse

Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;

The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart

In that vanished abode there far apart

On that disused and forgotten road

That has no dust-bath now for the toad.

Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout

And hush and cluck and flutter about:

I hear him begin far enough away

Full many a time to say his say

Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.

I know not who these mute folk are

Who share the unlit place with me—

Those stones out under the low-limbed tree

Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad.
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—

With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,

As sweet companions as might be had.

Poltergeist — Bill Greenwell

Someone's been shifting my furniture,

barging the armchairs, and knocking

the living nightlights out of them.

I turn my back, sleeping, and suddenly

the tables are turned, switches jiggle

and books go openly on a rampage.

Spree. My downstairs becomes

the space for some playing dangerous

games, follies, a crackerbarrel

of antics. The kitchen's in on it,

knives are out, a welter of recipes

tugs at the lip of the cupboards.

I sleep in the raw, a new recruit,

jumpy for biting on bullets, hands

skating the white sheets repeatedly.

Come down in the morning, ready

to exorcise, to read riot acts

and stamp on their habit of frenzy.

It's calm as carpet: the high jump,

the fireworks, madcap caramba

have all been returned to their boxes.

The rooms look just as I left them,

benign, deliberate, even tidy:

the chairs and tables parked properly,

the angles as right as ninepence. There

on the wall is the wriggle of red

where I scrawled your name, hoping

to summon you. This is a mess:

my sleep is as light as a half-thought.

In the dwarf hours, all my dreams

lap the shores of your body, gentle.

The rest of the house is a scamper;

someone's been shifting my furniture.

Leaving early — Sylvia Plath

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers

When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,

Me, sitting here bored as a loepard

In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,

Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding

And the white china flying fish from Italy.

I forget you, hearing the cut flowers

Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,

Pitchers and Coronation goblets

Like Monday drunkards.

The milky berries

Bow down, a local constellation,

Toward their admirers in the tabletop:

Mobs of eyeballs looking up.

Are those petals of leaves you've paried with them ---

Those green-striped ovals of silver tissue?

The red geraniums I know.

Friends, friends.

They stink of armpits

And the invovled maladies of autumn,

Musky as a lovebed the morning after.

My nostrils prickle with nostalgia.

Henna hags:cloth of your cloth.

They tow old water thick as fog.

The roses in the Toby jug

Gave up the ghost last night.

High time.

Their yellow corsets were ready to split.

You snored, and I heard the petals unlatch,

Tapping and ticking like nervous fingers.

You should have junked them before they died.

Daybreak discovered the bureau lid

Littered with Chinese hands.

Now I'm stared at

By chrysanthemums the size

Of Holofernes' head, dipped in the same

Magenta as this fubsy sofa.

In the mirror their doubles back them up.

Listen: your tenant mice

Are rattling the cracker packets.

Fine flour

Muffles their bird feet: they whistle for joy.

And you doze on, nose to the wall.

This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.

How did we make it up to your attic?

You handed me gin in a glass bud vase.

We slept like stones.

Lady, what am I doing

With a lung full of dust and a tongue of wood,

Knee-deep in the cold swamped by flowers?

Black Cat — Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place

your sight can knock on, echoing; but here

within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze

will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else

can ease him, charges into his dark night

howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels

the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

into her, so that, like an audience,

she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

and curl to sleep with them.

But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

suspended, like a prehistoric fly.