A Very Natural Thing

The supernatural is a way of life
in the Phantom World.
It is the living word,
a kind of thinking that
requires twisting
things around to refer
to one’s self or one other
in an indirect way.
This symbolism and metaphor,
these contradictory ideas
speak in a kind of paleologic
from the earliest days of the world.

Here, then, the supernatural
is natural for the phantoms that
hide in the catacombs
beneath the castle of Oona.
They are the poets, priests,
and scholars that keep
the world in its death-in-life.
I am trapped in this time,
only to wake to a very
natural thing.

Gary William Crawford is the author of three books of poetry, Poems of the Divided Self, In Shadow Lands, and The Shadow City, and the short story collection Gothic Fevers. He has published works of literary scholarship and criticism, such as Ramsey Campbell, J. Sheridan Le Fanu: A Bio-Bibliography, and Robert Aickman: An Introduction. He is also the founder and editor of Gothic Press (http://www.gothicpress.com/).

Find more by Gary William Crawford in the Author Index.

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