The Empty Room
Aye: though we hunted high and low
And hunted everywhere
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
Of any kind in any place
But a door ajar and an untouched meal
And an overtoppled chair ...
As the days shrink and the nights draw in, our imagination instinctively turns to ghost stories and sacred mysteries. From Halloween to Christmas, the darkness beyond our window dissolves reality, mixes the concrete with the capricious, and little by little we delight in the possibility of the supernatural, even when our skin prickles and a chill runs up our spine.
(Liza Voronin/The Epoch Times)
The sailors’ voyage is evoked in a strongly cinematic way. We see before us “the winter day” breaking “blue and bright” as the expedition nears the “lonely Isle.” The lighthouse towers above, white and still.
Before they land they see “three queer, black, ugly birds.” Are these the men who have disappeared, somehow enchanted? They plunge out of sight “without a sound.”
Making “fast the boat” the sailors disembark and begin the climb to the lighthouse. Time appears to slow down or stop entirely, and they feel as if they must “climb for evermore.” Yet paradoxically “all too soon” they reach the door that gapes “ajar.” Like a mouth from the inferno, it waits to swallow them up.
They pause on “the threshold,” as if between realities, and breathe the familiar smell of “limewash and tar,” now reeking of “some strange scent of death.” Plucking their courage up, they enter—and with “black-foreboding” we follow.
What do we find? The extract tells us: nothing more than “an untouched meal/ And an overtoppled chair.” We sense the sudden, terrifying violation of the natural order.
It’s hard not to be reminded of the Mary Celeste, the ship found floating on a becalmed Atlantic ocean, with its crew nowhere to be found. It was rumored that food and drink were laid out for dinner—as if everyone had been seized up in the blink of an eye by an unknown force.
Gibson’s use of rhythm, rhyme, and deft description all combine to create an unforgettable scene. Say the lines aloud and they stick in the mind like a demonic jingle.
It’s no coincidence that I was introduced to the passage not by opening up an anthology, but by hearing it recited in the Doctor Who story, The Horror of Fang Rock. In Tom Baker’s remarkable voice—all gravy, gravel, and cigars—the words come brilliantly alive. That’s the way true poetry is passed on: a phrase or a line catches our ear and we strain for more.
So what happens next? Dumbstruck, the men of the expedition muse on how “ill-chance came to all/ Who kept the Flannan Light.” Six had “come to a sudden end” and “three gone stark mad.” Others had thrown themselves off the top or “fallen dead by the lighthouse wall.”
Is the isle under a curse? Like all the best mysteries, the poem leaves us to wonder, but it hints at an even more devastating possibility in the final lines. They read: “We seemed to stand for an endless while,/Though still no word was said,/ Three men alive on Flannan Isle,/Who thought on three men dead.”
Why is it only now that we discover that the rescue party consists of three men too? Are they doomed to vanish as well, in a series of inexplicable disasters? Worse, in this uncanny atmosphere, can we really believe in their confident distinction between the living and the dead? Doesn’t the “endless while” suggest not only a psychological state of profound shock but also a spiritual reality?
Could it be that on this hellish rock, these three men are destined to search on and on, never to realize they are not looking for three strangers, but for themselves?
Wilfrid Gibson (1878 – 1962), was a British poet associated with World War I. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
