Ghost Child Song
Giles Goodland
A boy gestures from his pushchair
and evaporates
making a sleeping gesture.
In the departing daylights
we think what he cannot name.
I look into the mirror of him
waiting for nights to outnumber
as in small columns wishes are washed away
and the stars fail over him.
My hands print warmth. He's
breathing. I sing him back to nothing
and slot him under the covers
leaving a ghost of skin
and the night open in his door.
Sleep badly, son. Disturb us.
This is what nights are for, the struggle,
the waking nameless, the scream
shot in the dark, that reaches through.
Through recurrent wakings
we stumble songs and mumble back.
The rain lifts from the city
with the sound of the glassman coming
in the weakening sense of the sky.
Daylight is sharp and harsh. Sleep
more, there's too much to see.
To be woken is to be to be torn to
paper working itself in to you
as the birds pick up the weight of light
and sing it into colour,
so rising without words or thoughts
I pillow his sobs, push him down, down
into the dark, and hold him, and wake.
Giles Goodland
