Kimmo Rosenthal
In the room dark gaining *
(A Fib for Samuel Beckett)

Ghost
Footfalls
Whence unknown
No more stories
Room once full of sounds
Buried in who knows what profounds of mind
In this extremity his old terror of night laid hold on him again
As if looking his last. At that first night. Of thirty thousand odd. Turn away in the end to darkened room.
The dying and the going. From the word go. The word begone. Such as the light going now. Beginning to go.
Will you never have done?...Will you never have done revolving it all?
Ghost…he all but said ghost loved ones
In the room dark gaining
Not a sound
Dying glow
Embers
Ghost




* All the lines is this poem are complete phrases of the appropriate length taken from the plays Embers, Cascando, Eh Joe, Footfalls, A Piece of Monologue, and Ohio Impromptu in "The Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett", Grove Press, 1984