A heptameter on a Harry Potter game I play, and CXXXVI: The final days amid a hallowed place

I sit to play a game I played when I was very small,

before the world fell over, yes, before I lost it all.

It fills me with this feeling, like I'm staring at a ghost.

A ghost that was a little boy who loved his brother most.

And that ghost still plays Gameboy games his brother would have known.

For decades on he plays, and when I play, I am ungrown.

I somehow own his body and see only through his eyes,

I hear but what he hears and only prize what he would prize.

Then no, I'm not the witness of the ghost that is that boy,

instead he hosts in me, his grown-up self, to re-enjoy.

For he, that boy, he died when he was only playing games;

and games bring out again what both our split souls share, two twains.

And ghosts will crowd around me, all the ghosts I've been before,

to seek their turn to own me and to play their games once more.

~~~

When all know that a last departure’s come,

or somewhere not too distant off, at least,

or if, at very least, but one can sum

that soon his time there will abruptly cease,

it strikes my soul like darkened waters—still,

a pond that, once a-brim with life, is dead.

Like gazing at a body that is ill,

that cannot, cannot ever lift its head.

The memories play ghostly in each hall,

the phantoms of the days we should have loved.

The wraiths of days we did love, now like gall,

now into trunks and luggages are shoved.

Amid these fragment lives that we have known

the current man weeps at the time that’s flown.