This page was created by Desiree S Evans. The last update was by David Squires.
Ghost Land
"Ghost Land" is an original poem inspired by lines taken from Cherry's chapter in A Gathering of Old Men. I’ve bolded the line I used from the excerpt below, but I’ve also included a typescript draft of the scene, where the line reads differently: “The rows looked so naked and dreary and lonely.” In the final version we read in the book, Gaines has added a lot more physical land description and introspection from Cherry to this paragraph, which heightens the feeling of loneliness and dispossession we feel here and throughout the entire chapter. In my poem I wanted to capture the feeling of something ending, the ghosts of what use to be, the changing land, the erosion of time.
After about half a mile, we turned right on another headland. You had cane here, too, but just on one side. On the left the cane had been cut and hauled away, and you could see all the way back to the swamps. It made me feel lonely. In my old age, specially in grinding, when I saw an empty cane field, it always made me feel lonely. The rows looked so naked and gray and lonely—like an old house where the people have moved from. Where good friends have moved from, leaving the house empty and bare, with nothing but ghosts now to keep it company.
Ghost Land
I.
The rows looked so naked and gray and lonely,
like an old house where the people have moved from.
Amongst the trees another ghost, a fading memory.
The cane fields grow thick against an amber sky.
In this undying country, we hide our hurts.
We bury our loves above ground.
II.
The shot rang out in the mid-day heat.
It was the last violation, a season for
cutting, for burning acres, for the merciful.
How the light wounds: a growing tally
of days etched onto an unmarked grave.
The old folk gave meaning to it all:
the pattern of the seasons, a curving
of the river, plows in the fallow earth.
In this house we sleep in the silent room.
The sand spills outside the hour glass.
Tender as bruised skin, the children leave
home. Somewhere in the tall grass the rabbits
forage through the undergrowth. The family
succumbs, a thousands different mournings.
III.
The truth of longing finds us
seeking peace. A hand opening
across the span of miles, the warming
world casting out, untethered—every part
played in the aftermath. The truth
of returning is that we wish for grace. Sunrise,
the fading images behind our eyes.
In this season the land is damp with rain.
We eat from the wild green light.