Hoping for Ghosts

The poet once lived here,
in the perfect English flat
opening to the Spanish Steps,
a museum now, all polished wood
and cozy corners. A place you could live
in comfortably. Even with his ghostly
death mask staring inward,
even with the crowds of tourists,
students and artists on the steps
just outside the walls.

It is quiet here. Visitors come and go.
A few minutes in the museum
and on to the next check box.
But you settle in. Stay a while,
soaking in something more than ambience,
more than the little snippets of history
listed on small cards throughout the rooms
where he once lived.

You are hoping for ghosts
of whatever romantic spirit
infected his life and verse.
Not facts and things, but
feeling, heart, emotion,
a belief in something more
than what we can see, something
more real than real, only found
in the stillness.

About this poem

Some places speak to me in a mystical way. Shakespeare’s home. Robert Frost’s home. Venice. The first Christian monastery in England. When I step in, I suddenly feel overwhelmed by the spirit of the person or people who have lived there. Often they have been part of my life by virtue of their writing, and it is not until I am in their spaces that I realize just how deep their effect on me has been.

The picture is of John Keats’ house, which indeed opens to the Spanish Steps in Rome. It really does have a death mask in it (the picture below).

Tom