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Ghost Town
With phantoms, I have lived for far too long.
Both day and night, I’ve sighed, without a song.
In vacant shells, I’ve tried to make my home
In this ghost town of memories where I roam.
They crowd like tombs around me every day—
These husks of cherished dreams, now passed away,
Which line the dusty street of this dead town
Where I walk blindly, pacing up and down.
I walk in circles, senseless to my need,
As aimless as a blowing tumbleweed,
As round and round I go—each day the same—
Like someone who’s forgotten his own name.
How often, I have entered in once more
The same old rotting ruins, which before,
In olden days, brimmed with life’s joy and spice,
But now are filled with cobwebs, rats and mice,
And broken glass, which on the floor now lies,
Brushed by the sweeping wind that ever sighs
Like some sad, low lament of one bereaved
Or whispers of lost voices, softly sieved.
I’ve clung to shadows, hiding from the day,
My eyes beholding only shades of gray,
Until, deprived of light that I’ve disdained,
My spirit of all color has been drained.
But now, these pallid phantoms make me weary;
Their presence leaves me lonely, and their eerie,
Faint whispers are but echoes of a past
Which, though I wait, will not return at last.
Their nearness leaves me cold on winter nights
And on spring mornings, robs me of delights
That I could know, if I would dare to choose
To leave this place of never-ending blues.
I’ll quit this habitation of the dead!
I’ll flee from all these ghosts that haunt my head,
I’ll leave this town, devoid of life and hope,
Where lone souls grasp at shades and blindly grope.
I’ll leave it to the snakes and centipedes,
The rats and mice and blowing tumbleweeds,
The cloudbursts, blazing sun, and swirling dust,
The snow and icy winter winds that gust.
But at the edge of town, I stop and think,
Where will I go, now that I’m on the brink
Of starting a new life, or so it seems?
What lies beyond this graveyard of lost dreams?
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Second Spring
Can fields long buried under snow
Fill up once more with wildflowers?
Can frozen rivers melt and flow
Which stood like iron countless hours?
Can icy winds turn warm and sweet
With piquant scents? Can dead trees bloom?
Can birds awake with songs to greet
The green earth, freed from winter’s tomb?
Can land, locked hard by killing cold,
Held captive in a sleep of death,
Revive again, thawed by the gold,
Warm sun and spring’s life-giving breath?
If so, then might I also know
A second spring—my youth’s rebirth?
May not a field of flowers grow
Where snow once blanketed the earth?
You are to me my golden sun,
Warmed by your beams, the icy fears
Lodged in my heart all melt and run
Away, that held me fast for years.
Shine on me your beloved beams!
Let flowers bud, and songbirds sing,
Let winter melt in flowing streams,
And come, oh come, my second spring!
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Martin Rizley grew up in Oklahoma and in Texas, and has served in pastoral ministry both in the United States and in Europe. He is currently serving as the pastor of a small evangelical church in the city of Málaga on the southern coast of Spain.
I have seen many ghost towns when I was living in Arizona. Your excellent detail captures the essence of them and reminds me of having visited them. “The graveyard of lost dreams” concludes beautifully. Oh, for that second spring!
Thank you, Roy, for your appreciative comments. I’m glad that you felt the description of the ghost town captured the essence of ghost towns you have visited. Ghost towns have always struck me, above all, as sad places, from which the bustling activity of life has long departed. That’s why it serves here as a metaphor for a mind filled with memories of an unrecoverable past. Thanks again for your response.
As I read “Ghost Town” it is not actually about a real place, but simply a metaphor for the speaker’s memories. They fill and crowd his mind, and seem to contain little else but regrets, missed chances, unfulfilled dreams, and “lost voices.” The speaker wants to escape from this dreary host of past failures, and go elsewhere. But the poem ends with a strong sense of mortality, when he says “I’m on the brink / Of starting a new life” followed by “What lies beyond this graveyard of lost dreams?”
The next poem (“Second Spring”) is likely written to answer the first by calling for a rebirth of hope and energy. But the poem is largely made up of rhetorical questions that seem to suggest the impossibility of this happening. The last two quatrains are addressed to an unknown person (perhaps a loved one, or perhaps God), whom the speaker asserts can bring about the desired renaissance, and yet the hope seems to be forlorn.
The poems are autobiographical and closely related to each other. They stem from a time in my life nearly three decades ago when I experienced a period of grief followed by a period of renewal. The first poem was written in free verse originally, but I rewrote it only recently as a formal poem with rhyme and meter. The sense of mortality that you notice at the end of the poem arises from the sense I had at the time that the days of my youth had come to an end, and I had no idea what the future held.
The rhetorical questions in the second poem do not so much express doubt and uncertainty as a sense of wonder and astonished disbelief, as I realized that the former prolonged period of lamentation was giving way to the restoration of youthful enthusiasm and vitality. It was written as a love poem to my wife.
“Ghost town of memories” in line 4 immediately suggests to me the ancient Greek “memory palace” technique for recalling large quantities of information. But here, Martin, the mental palace is in ruins. You’ve done a superb job of selecting imagistic details to display this. The memories are not so much departed as turned dreadfully distasteful. The speaker wants to be rid of them, but lacks the resolve to leave, because they hold his identity. “Like someone who’s forgotten his own name” is a disturbing clue to the “loss of identity” threatened here. The loss of name is a loss of self. I can’t help but think of the immensely popular Japanese animated film “Spirited Away.” In Japanese, “spirited away” is a euphemism for death or abandonment or betrayal, especially when it involves a young person. These things are too terrible to speak of, and the term “spirited away” avoids the reality by blaming a spirit of some kind, and leaving the ever-so-slight hope of restoration. In the anime, the heroine’s name is stolen, but she recovers it after grueling adventures, and in fact helps another entirely abandoned person to escape loss of identity by remembering an event that recalls his name.
The hesitation of your speaker at the end of “Ghost Town” is understandable when we see that the decayed ghost town holds his formerly pleasant but now thoroughly distressing identity. But by leaving he may lose any identity at all. The solution is “Second Spring,” a natural but (from the “Ghost Town” point of view) inconceivable restoration of the person. All the questions demonstrate the immense wonder of the process. Amazing work, and glad you have it to write about!
Margaret, Thank you for your penetrating analysis of the poem. I found particularly insightful your pointing out the connection between loss of name and loss of identity– especially, how a crisis of personal identity frequently follows the experience of death, abandonment or betrayal. I also found psychologicaly perceptive your explanation of the hesitation to leave the town expressed at the end of the poem– a hesitation arising from a sense of the entanglement of personal identity with the ghost town itself and anxiety over whether leaving will mean the loss of “any identity at all.” Such comments are very helpful in enabling me to understand better what is going on in my own poem!
I guess we’ve all been trapped in a metaphorical or physical ghost town at one point or another in our lives. The feelings are vividly expressed.
Not a wishy-washy love poem, but one that carries on from the theme of Ghost town, Second Spring is a poem of hope and redemption. I like it.
Thank you, Paul, for your feedback.
“Ghost Town” has such depth in its description of both visual scenery and the emotional anguish it embodies. And in fact, “Second Spring” does much the same, encasing its questions in imagery that evokes yearning. Beautiful poems!
Thank you, Cynthia, for your appreciative comments.