"Ghostly" means what is by way of the spirit, stems from it and follows its nature. "Ghostly" means spiritual, but not in the narrow sense that ties the word to "spirituality," the priestly orders or their church. To a superficial reader, even Trakl seems to use the word in this narrow sense, at least in the poem "In Hellbrunn" (183), where it says:

... Thus the oaks turn spiritually green,
Above the dead's forgotten paths.

Earlier, the poet mentions "the shades of princes of the church, of noble women," "the shades of those long dead" which seem to hover above the "pond of spring." But the poet, who is here again singing "the blue lament of evening," does not think of the clergy when he says "the oaks turn spiritually green." He is thinking of that earliness of the long since dead which promises the "springtime of the soul." The poem "Song of the Spirit" (16), composed earlier, strikes the same theme, though in an even more veiled and searching manner. The spirit referred to in this strangely ambiguous "Song of the Spirit" finds clearer expression in the last stanza:

Beggar there by ancient none
Seems expired in a prayer,
Shepherd gently leaves the hill,
In the grove an angel sings,
Sings a song,
Sings the children to their sleep.

But, even though the word "spiritual" has no ecclesiastical overtones for the poet himself, he surely could have resorted to the phrase "of the spirit" to refer to what he has in mind, and speak of twilight of the spirit and night of the spirit. Why does he not do so? Because "of the spirit" means the opposite of material. This opposition posits a differentiation of two separate realms and, in Platonic-Western terms, states the gulf between the suprasensuous noeton and the sensuous aistheton.