“Adieu, adieu, adieu.  Remember me.”

Hamlet, Act I, sc, v, 98

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

If you were ghost and I were ghost with you,

Would specter mouths be tempted, bringing lips

Together in our graves?  Would you want blue

Eyes, women and their breasts at fingertips

Although they could not touch, not really?  Would

I, faceless, face again your turning face,

Your non-existent face, your mouth like wood

On mauve-lipped Maori gods?  Would such disgrace

Come round again, the incarnation of

Rejection but without the flesh this time?

Would transmigration of the soul of love

To spectral liplessness be your last crime?

  If we were ghosts together, would you stain?

    Would you give anything but mist-lipped pain?

~ Phillip Whidden