Ghost Of Ben Hall

The Ghost of Benedictine Hall

by Mardell Fortier

 

Who has dared to disturb
my silent walk through these rooms?
For a hundred years I have made
my reverent pilgrimage.
Do you think to hold the past
with a wrecking ball?
I am the ghost of Benedictine Hall.
 
A century has turned since Jaeger
laid the cornerstone. They and their
generation have turned to dust.
How many men have entered under
“God, Church, and Country”?
 
Who now prays in Sisters’ Chapel?
Do the Kitchen Sisters yet cook?
Are there still experiments in Bugs Lab?
And who shall carve the turkey this
Christmas laboring to come?
 
Strange. I hear no conversation in the scholar's lounge.
Floating through the fourth floor attic
I seem to hear the strains of a tune.
And look! The Sisters are
climbing solemnly the steps
to second floor, to Sisters’ Chapel.
 
The students who have passed
through the corridors and ascended
the quaint stairs, I know them all:
doctors, lawyers, priests, monks;
men and women who shall carry with them
the memory of this place…as do I.
 
The cornerstone was moved from Ben Hall
to Kindlon, but the cornerstone
which is Christ is from Alpha
to Omega.  His watch-- eternal.
 
I am the ghost of Benedictine Hall.
Who am I, ye inquire so?
When all mysteries are revealed,
then, then shall ye know.