"Ghosts" (A Poem)

Like Emily Dickinson’s “One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted,” Elizabeth Jennings’ poem “Ghosts” employs apparitions as an unconventional metaphor. Rather than remnants of the past haunting an abode, Jennings uses the notion of specters to symbolize remnants of regret tormenting the mind, like the remorse of never telling someone you love them or the pang of missed opportunities.

Those houses haunt in which we leave
Something undone. It is not those
Great words or silence of love

That spread their echoes through a place
And fill the locked-up, unbreathed gloom.
Ghosts do not haunt with any face

That we have known; they only come
With arrogance to thrust at us
Our own omissions in a room.

The words we would not speak they use,
The deeds we dared not act they flaunt,
Our nervous silences they bruise;

It is our helplessness they choose
And our refusals that they haunt.[1]

Works Referenced

Jennings, Elizabeth. “Ghosts.” Collected Poems, 1953-1985. Manchester: Carcanet, 1986. 32-33.
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[1] Jennings, 32-33.