4 MARCH 1989, Page 29

Ghosts

Our genes are ghosts condemned to immortality; Re-incarnated, they drift on after we die, Preserving the colours, contours, benchmarks of the race, The nose, the chin, the eyelight of the family face.

My guest, a fifty-year-old cousin I had not seen Since he and I were adolescents of fifteen, Seemed, as we met, a stranger ... I was a bad host, Suddenly recognising my dead father's ghost.

Edward Lowbury