Authors' ghosts

I think that authors' ghosts creep back
Nightly to haunt the sleeping shelves
And find the books they wrote.
Those authors put final, semi-final touches,
Sometimes whole paragraphs.

Whole pages are added, rewritten, revised,
So deeply by night those authors employ
Themselves with those old books of theirs.

How otherwise
Explain the fact that maybe after years
Have passed, the reader
Picks up the book - But was it like that?
I don't remember this...Where
Did this ending come from?
I recall quite another.

Oh yes, it has been tampered with
No doubt about it -
The author's very touch is here, there and there,
Where it wasn't before, and
What's more, something's missing -
I could have sworn...

--Muriel Spark
(In: Litt, Toby and Ali Smith [eds]: 13. New Writing. London: Picador and BAC, 2005.)


(When I reread Muriel Sparks' "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" about three years ago, it totally wasn't the same.)