written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Sunday 5 July 2015

Reveniens

To someone of a Goth sensibility like myself, revenant will suggest a ghostly or animated corpse returned from the grave, the word being derived from the Latin reveniens (returning). But these ghosts or now empty shells may be metaphorical, not just supernatural. The word echoes Mary Coughlan mourning Whisky Didn’t Kill the Pain, particularly the line. “If you had stayed with me my fiery lover/ Together we’d be embers in my brain.” Not just a lament for what was, but what could have been. “Revenant” manifesting as the shell of a future long lost.  

Deep in her Eyes is based on the accompanying sketch which I did some thirty years ago and physically based it on a photo found in a student magazine. But its sub text is one most of us will recognise. To love and lose, then later realise what was really lost.
 
 
 
Deep in her Eyes
 
Down in the wine bar
A girl I once knew
Alone in a corner
She waits for a man
 
“Come by my side
It’s been a long time”
This change disturbs
What form are you?”
 
Back to her place
Drinks with no care
What did life deal?
My revenant lover 

Charm on the stairway
She turns and smiles
Her ghostly whisper
“I know you so well.”

 

Barry McCann

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