Currency

[Ghost]

(after P. Ackroyd)

And so he will go to dance
among the beggars' fires
and seek the secrets
of their sleep among the lintels,

and he will learn what dreams
come beneath the lamp-
light most times linger
on at waking, that they mat

and tangle in a burn and an itch
of lice and burr. And he
will rend his clothes with stones
and stray blades and appear

as they, and mark their signs
on dark beams beneath bridges,
and he will taste the gristle of rat
and mongrel, and through

the coals of some evenings chase
their ghosts through the rot of churches
and store-houses (his soles slashed
and bleeding, wounds swelling

black and swarming with eye-
less things), and some nights he
will mumble his many names
through shivers and fleas

crawling in the frenzy
of his heat. And when
he wakes from his fevers
he will be given new names:

Shambles, Tatters, Walker,
Grey, and he will be one of them,
and he will be all of them, and he
will wander among them down

the length of their days. Come
moonset in some cool September he
will find a coin among the ditchweeds,
and the face upon it will be haggard

and wild, and he will wonder
what king was this to stare so
haunted, what lands might be
governed by one such as he?

But he will carry its weight
in the sweat of his palm
for many evenings, and feel it
grow slick and warm in the cup

of his hand. Though he hungers,
he will not eat of it, though
thirst embers in the chimney
of his throat, he will not drink

of it, though it heavies in his pockets,
he will not take leave of it, for the merchants
will refuse his trade and claim him
a maker of false currencies.

And so he will come to curse the face
on the coin and lament
his state in the gutters of the street
and his fortune will be dust and shadows

until one morning he will fall
among a shimmer of puddles
and find eyes staring from the water.
He will see in the bend of the circle

his own eyes, and the strange eyes
of the coin, and he will see they are
the same, and he will know they are his own.
And so he will rise among the dandelion

and the thistle, and he will behold all
of the fallen things and all of the forgotten
things, and he will know the sway and the break
of all the dying things, and he will lay claim

to all the lands to which these things hold
court. And the wind will be his voice,
and his voice will be the wind, and it
will scatter stray leaves in the corners

of ruins, and the ruins will be a house
and the house will be himself,
and something will pound deep within,
and something will pound deep, without.

And so he will go again to dance among the beggars'
fires, to burn down the walls of his own ruin,
to become again the ghost-smoke that blacks
the heavy lace on the hanging palace drapes.

[mnaz]

Excellent poetry. You took me into the alleys and ruins of an old soot-saturated Dark City, where time shifted back and forth, and I became the soot and grit at times.

From the first lines here I thought of Dickens and the ever-gray alleyways of London, and sure enough, when I read about Ackroyd . . . Thanks for introducing me to a fantastic writer.

(You write kind of "like a ghost" ...)

[Ghost]

I am absolutely thrilled that you have been encouraged
to read Ackroyd. Thank you!