Saturday, October 01, 2016

Avenue Mandelstam

is it ancient lamplight or the stars along the avenue
blinking out is it eternal night or only the dream
of your paper tears remembered

poet of the sun above ground for the while
it took the claws of night to settle on you
and cawing took its turn

is it ancient lamplight is it the paper tears
I remember from what I read of you on the way,
on the train going to work

as a file clerk, mandelstam I murmured to the deep
not the depths of the files whose paper lawns
I couldn't afford to live on anyway

stuffed as my heart was then with his poetry
the paper tears falling and falling
the stars and the lamplight simultaneously

going out

mary angela douglas 1 october 2016