Picture with Ancestors

Let only a faint light shelter in the room, And then if ghosts step on this slanting floor They will be easy ghosts, tacit, demure, Sure of themselves as you were never sure. They will tell you personal histories, they will assume They are the family you have waited for.

Only a circumstance of placid light, And out of the past, the paralyzed, the dumb, Glad to forgive you, glad to be at home, Will touch your mouth and diffidently comb The shy hair. What you did was neither right Nor could it be helped; this is what we become,

Cunning, and not kind. Who wills the means Wills murder as the word of every day. The hates that willed you from the day you were a boy, Their pinched mouths screaming out the word Destroy, Spit, and the ignorant gesture contravenes The old folk with their hands that hold the day.

And how to deal with ghosts? They are like cries That rip you in the dead-watch of the night, Like figured moths meticulously sought, And killed, and pinned. Everlastingly on the hot Mouth of the murderer his murder lies; Your terrors float like tears upon your eyes.

Only the dead, who know the dead's release, Can talk to you in confidential words; Their eyes quiet, implacable as swords, And their hands tense with passionate accords, They ask the lamplight, they ask you, for peace. The manner of their loving is their words.