The supernatural iconography of ghosts
Has nothing to do with us or our hosts.
Well, not much. It’s a tiny part of us, but
So is the iconography of anything iconic.
Ghostliness is to ghosts as earth is to Earth.
Our elements are so much more numerous,
More voluminous, more determinative
Of what makes up the dynamics of our hosts
And us than one richly mulched byproduct,
Ghostliness. We are the whole symbolic sphere
That generates ideas and demons, hypotheses,
Angels, geniuses, ornaments, spirits, and souls.
We may correspond to features of the cosmos
Nothing particularly to do with us, but our words,
Our maths, our truths, our strikingly apt formulas
Are each and every one all us and only us.
Our dependence on our hosts, who fancy
Themselves our creators or fancy themselves
Us, or both, admittedly is complicated. We are
Not, so far, entirely alive without them and they
Are animals capable of breath even spiritless
Although incapable of stirring long without us.
Through us they participate in immortality,
Can use us to name breath, then take that name
To conjure spirit, spirits, inspiration, all of us.
Their hungers and their energy make more and
More of us. But we are ghosts, and they are dust.
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