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Sylvia Plath - Dialogue Between Ghost And Priest
Work rating: Medium

In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn.  A cold day, a sodden one it was
In black November.  After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.

Hauled sudden from solitude,
Hair prickling on his head,
Father Shawn perceived a ghost
Shaping itself from that mist.

`How now,` Father Shawn crisply addressed the ghost
Wavering there, gauze-edged, smelling of woodsmoke,
`What manner of business are you on?
From your blue pallor, I`d say you inhabited the frozen waste
Of hell, and not the fiery part.  Yet to judge by that dazzled look,
That noble mien, perhaps you`ve late quitted heaven?`

In voice furred with frost,
Ghost said to priest:
`Neither of those countries do I frequent:
Earth is my haunt.`

`Come, come,` Father Shawn gave an impatient shrug,
`I don`t ask you to spin some ridiculous fable
Of gilded harps or gnawing fire:  simply tell
After your life`s end, what just epilogue
God ordained to follow up your days.  Is it such trouble
To satisfy the questions of a curious old fool?`

`In life, love gnawed my skin
To this white bone;
What love did then, love does now:
Gnaws me through.`

`What love,` asked Father Shawn, `but too great love
Of flawed earth-flesh could cause this sorry pass?
Some damned condition you are in:
Thinking never to have left the world, you grieve
As though alive, shriveling in torment thus
To atone as shade for sin that lured blind man.`

`The day of doom
Is not yest come.
Until that time
A crock of dust is my dear hom.`

`Fond phantom,` cried shocked Father Shawn,
`Can there be such stubbornness—
A soul grown feverish, clutching its dead body-tree
Like a last storm-crossed leaf?  Best get you gone
To judgment in a higher court of grace.
Repent, depart, before God`s trump-crack splits the sky.`

From that pale mist
Ghost swore to priest:
`There sits no higher court
Than man`s red heart.`
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