767 and 769

You’re late, so very late, and I must stay—

the ghosts will wander in if I’m away.

I can’t allow that fate, no, not today,

so I must linger longer here, and stay.

No building such as this can, empty, be,

that’s why your lateness is a harm to me,

who must guard lest the ghosts I cannot see

intrude herein, wherein they mustn’t be.

For if, alone, the empty hotel sits,

its space inside will lose its loose-held wits.

It calls for ghosts, as many as it fits,

into its empty rooms where no-one sits.

So don’t be late—I’ll be tempted to go—

to let the haunting come, its ghosts in tow.

~~~

I did it! I survived my greatest test!

For while I wasted, suffering so long,

the tortures that my wishing would not wrest,

the end of such a torture, such a wrong,

appeared before me when I’d given up!

Appeared! Without my prompting or my arm

to force it! So dessert comes from the sup

of agony, from long-suffering harm,

endurance gives to patience in the end!

I did not know what joy it would be now,

to let the test endure, and to it bend:

I am the garden underneath the plow.

But there are greater tests than mine. E’en so:

to write while noise objects is one I know.