Something for the Ghosts

By David Constantine

Reviewed by Darren Guy

The strongest poems in this latest collection from Constantine are indeed his poems about ghosts. The ghosts of places, friends, relatives and characters from way back. Indeed the poems that seem more powerful offer-up almost Hardy-like imagery of sea, wind, blowing veils and loved ones returning from misty graveyards:

'But I did my level best to think of her asleep
with an open face and open palms
Fast asleep in the summer early daylight' (Sleepwalker)

Constantine's Ghosts are emotionally haunting and very vivid - it is a cry for return and an expression of loss:

'that heavy skirt
Your bare cold feet come out from under it
Their print, black wet, on the slabs of slate.'

The imagery in the poems weaves in and out as the living die and then return and die again:
In Orangery instead of leaving in a hearse, they are

'arriving home, coming home
Into the warm, the winter house'

Something for the Ghosts is a painful book, although I feel not as strong as his early work. The majority of poems are very personal, full of memories, full of regrets, and full of tributes to those who will now remain as ghosts.