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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When Night Falls

One of the most interesting exhibitions at Blackpool Grundy Art Gallery of recent times was the Haunted House experience, which climaxed in an evening of poetry and short stories courtesy of the Dead Good Poets – the word Dead never being so apt. 

As one of the performers, it was uncanny reciting a ghost story in an atmospheric space itself reputed to be haunted by an artist past; one whose very paintings lined the walls like windows into a darker world. A shadow existence we cannot consciously see, yet there is the feeling it is watching us. 

Funny old world when you think about it. We have split the atom, landed on the moon, and mapped the universe. Yet, there is nothing guaranteed to instil fear than the good old fashioned thing that goes bump in the night. Because, of course, we know not what that thing is. And the most primal of instincts is to retreat from that we cannot rationalise. 

One of the most intriguing speculations regarding noises in the night is one I heard offered in the classic TV serial Quatermass and the Pit. When the sceptical Professor Quatermass finds his scientific logic challenged by a series of apparitions and poltergeist events, he reasons

“…surely it’s possible for…for ghosts, let’s use the word… to be phenomena that were badly observed and wrongly interpreted. 

With that in mind, I conceived the following verses.

When Night Falls 

For Living 

When night falls

Air breaths silently

Gravitating cold 

When night falls

The knocking begins

Dowsing for fear 

When night falls

It takes my name

And whispers it back 

Sometimes she appears

Then fades away

Like breath on a mirror 

Intruder mine

Be gone from me

Out vile spectre

 

For Dead

When night falls

I walk alone

Seeking consort 

When night falls

I send words

That don’t reach him 

When night falls

My fingers seek his

But never connect 

Oh, to touch

The radiance of flesh

A rhythm of pulse 

Why wish me away?

Why does he resent?

Can’t we be friends?

 

Barry McCann

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