Nocturnal

It's midnight now and sounds like midnight then,

The words like distant stars that faintly grace

                     The all-pervading dark of space,

                     But not meant for the world of men.

                                        It's not what we forget

But what was never known we most regret

Discovery of. Checking one last cassette

Among my old unlabelled discards, few

Of which reward the playing, I find you.

Some years after her death, but years ago,

Hearing Gwen's voice recite "Suburban Sonnet,"

                     At first we could not focus on it,

                     So jolted that the radio

                                        Should casually exhume

From our shared memory the woman whom

We knew and make her present in the room,

As though in flesh, surprised to find that she

Had earned this further immortality.

Who ever thought they would not hear the dead?

Who ever thought that they could quarantine

                     Those who are not, who once had been?

                     At that old station on North Head

                                        Inmates still tread the boards,

Or something does; equipment there records

The voices in the dormitories and wards,

Although it's years abandoned. Undeleted,

What happened is embedded and repeated,

Or so they say. And that would not faze you

Who always claimed events could not escape

                     Their scenes, recorded as on tape

                     In matter and played back anew

                                        To anyone attuned

To that stored energy, that psychic wound.

You said you heard the presence which oppugned

Your trespass on its lasting sole occasion

In your lost house. I scarcely need persuasion,

So simple is this case. Here in the dark

I listen, tensing in distress, to each

                     Uncertain fragment of your speech,

                     Each desolate, half-drunk remark

                                        You uttered unaware

That this cassette was running and would share

Far in the useless future your despair

With one who can do nothing but avow

You spoke from midnight, and it's midnight now.