The Ghost of Shadwell Stair

I read this poem by Wilfred Owen when I was in my early teens, and found it haunting but enigmatic. So I was immediately interested in James Fenton's reading of it as a crypto-homosexual poem in his piece on same-sex love poetry in yesterday's Guardian Review. Probably this reading of the poem is standard critical currency these days, but I don't think I've read any criticism on Owen since I was an undergraduate in the early seventies, when, as I recall it, Owen's homosexuality was still a matter of whispers.

Shadwell Stair

I am the ghost of Shadwell Stair.
Along the wharves by the water-house,
And through the dripping slaughter-house,
I am the shadow that walks there.

Yet I have flesh both firm and cool,
And eyes tumultuous as the gems
Of moons and lamps in the lapping Thames
When dusk sails wavering down the Pool.

Shuddering the purple street-arc burns
Where I watch always; from the banks
Dolorously the shipping clanks,
And after me a strange tide turns.

I walk till the stars of London wane,
And dawn creeps up the Shadwell Stair.
But when the crowing sirens blare,
I with another ghost am lain.

Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)


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