Memory Eternal

Sometimes in the middle of the night
I wake and go downstairs
to the bathroom.

There is enough moonlight
through the windows
to see my way,
enough to catch the glass
of the photographs
on the walls.

Old photographs.
Faded photographs.

People standing beside houses,
children squinting into the sun,
women in dark dresses,
men whose names
are still spoken here.

Others whose names
no one remembers.

And on one wall
George Washington
watches over them all,
as if memory itself
needed a founding father.

I pass them slowly,
half awake,
and sometimes I wonder
if this house is full of ghosts.

Not the kind
who open doors
or walk the corridors
after midnight.

Something quieter.

People who have gone
and yet have somehow
not entirely gone.

They are in every room.

In the photograph
beside the window.

In the chair
where someone always sat.

In the cupboard
with the old cups.

In stories that begin,
Your grandfather used to…

Last night
we sat beside the sea,
marking twelve years
since we found each other again.

A friend had died that morning.

Around us
people ate their dinner.
Glasses were filled.
Someone laughed.

Beyond us
the waves kept breaking
against the shore.

We raised our glasses.

The waves came in.

A friend was gone
and we were still here,

marking a return
on the day of a leaving.

And somehow
that seemed right.

It was what
he would have wanted.

The living
went on living.

And now
we speak his name
differently.

As though a name itself
knows when someone
has crossed over
into memory.

In the morning
I will walk again
into the village

and find the ghosts
have followed me.

Or perhaps
they were already there.

This was his house.

She used to sit there.

That olive tree
was planted by someone
whose grandchildren
are old now.

There are empty houses
still carrying the names
of families who left
long ago.

A wall remains
after the hands
that built it are gone.

A path remembers
more footsteps
than anyone can count.

And beneath these
are older ghosts.

Broken stones.

Ruined walls.

Churches built
where other churches stood.

Words spoken every morning
that have passed
from mouth to mouth
for thousands of years.

Perhaps even language
is a kind of haunting.

The dead leaving
a little of themselves
on the tongues
of the living.

So where
do ghosts live?

Perhaps here.

In houses.

In villages.

In photographs
and stories.

In the names
we cannot stop saying.

In our minds.

In our hearts.

In us.

Until one day
the photograph fades,

the story is told
for the last time,

the house falls,

and no one remembers
who planted the tree.

And then what?

At funerals here
we say,

Memory eternal.

Αἰωνία του ἡ μνήμη.

Perhaps it is not
a statement.

Perhaps it is a prayer.

Remember this life.

Remember this name.

Do not let
this person disappear.

And tonight,
when I go downstairs
through the moonlight,

past all those faces
on the walls,

perhaps I will understand
that I am not walking
through a house
filled with ghosts.

I am walking
through memory,

and for a little while

memory
is walking through me.