Ghost Music
Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,
Bent-backed and blind the organist.
From rafters looming shadowy,
From the pipes’ tuneful company,
Drifted together drowsily,
Innumerable, formless, dim,
The ghosts of long-dead melodies,
Of anthems, stately, thunderous,
Of Kyries shrill and tremulous:
In melancholy drowsy-sweet
They huddled there in harmony.
Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.
Copyright © 2016 by Wayne Miller. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 15, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Ghost Music” was published in Over the Brazier (The Poetry Bookshop, 1917).
Robert Graves
The author of numerous collections of poetry, novels, and translation, Robert Graves fought in World War I and was viewed as an accomplished war poet. Also the author of the historical novel I, Claudius, Graves died in Majorca in 1985.