SUMMONING THE DEAD 'Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly ...' Kathleen Ferrier's crystal dictation is perfectly preserved after almost fifty years - not even a scratch on a shiny CD, her chaste photograph reminiscent of so many black and white films: 'Brief Encounter,' Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard hesitating with out-moded restraint on the edge of adultery; John Mills fighting the Battle of Britain with a clipped accent. 'Blow the wind south o'er the bonny blue sea ...' I can remember the age before I was born, a childhood montage of newsreel clippings, silent films, Hollywood musicals, War movies, and Westerns: John Wayne almost single-handedly defeating Red Indians, Germans and Japs; Busby Berkeley's geometric human sculptures; the set-piece extravaganzas of Cecil B. DeMille; Charlie Chaplin suffering the fate of the small man; ordinary people walking jerkily along busy streets - a monochrome world where the powerful knew their place: Queen Victoria in an open carriage acknowledging the cheers of a silent crowd; King George V and Queen Mary enthroned under a giant canopy receiving the homage of India's princes; the Tsar and Tsarina strutting in a court procession - a society captured at the point of collapse: enthusiastic young men queuing to enlist; mud-covered troops going over the top; dead bodies strewn across a Russian square; Lenin haranguing the peasants. 'Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly ...' I am listening to a singer who fell silent whilst I was still in the womb. We need no longer risk the journey to the land without a sun: the dead will visit us whenever we please; imprisoned on film they are compelled to come at our bidding, without sacrifice or imprecation we may summon their shades, but they will not meet our gaze nor answer our questions. Without substance or feeling, they are condemned to a cellulose imitation of their lives. 'Blow bonny breeze my love to me ...' -- Jeremy YOUNG. Born in Birmingham and educated at Cambridge and London Universities, Mr. Young has been in Dublin since 1994 and in 1998 was Director of Pastoral and Practical Theology at the Church of Ireland Theological College. He has been widely published in Ireland and Great Britain, including "Poetry Ireland Review" and "Books Ireland."