Adrienne Rich - What Ghosts Can Say lyrics

When Harry Wylie saw his father's ghost
As bearded and immense as once in life
Bending above his bed long after midnight
He screamed and gripped the
Corner of the pillow
Till aunts came hurrying white
In dressing gowns
To say it was a dream he knew they lied
The smell of his father's leather riding crop
And stale tobacco stayed to prove it to him
Why should there stay such tokens of a ghost
If not to prove it came on serious business?
His father always had meant serious business
But never so wholly in his look and gesture
As when he beat the boy's uncovered thighs
Calmly and resolutely, at an hour
When Harry never had been awake before
The man who could choose that
Single hour of night
Had in him the ingredients of a ghost
Mortality would quail at such a man

An older Harry lost his childish notion
And only sometimes wondered if events
Could ech othus long after in a dream
If so, it surely meant they had a meaning
But why the actual punishment had fallen
For what offense of boyhood, he could try
For years and not unearth what
Ghosts can say -
Even the ghosts of fathers -comes obscurely
What if the terror stays without the meaning?