[in memorium, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]
your terrible snows cannot conceal it:
all you have lost.
though it should snow forever, piling
lace on lace and pearl on pearl
in the sheer dream of your
interminable ballet.
your official icons privately weep;
does your heart sleep under the snow, my princess?
the rainbow of your dissidence appears and disappears.
it isn't magic: your multinationals cut down
like grain, star after star in the fading darkness.
then.the pale famine of renewed terror.
You! my martyred fairytale! could I reach
you through the agitprop
can I find your smile, my dispossessed
I carry white flowers in the swirling snow
to match the exquisite blankness of your soul.
the frozen curve of your "mier".
to be free you must take your
heart and hurl it at the moon; to be free you must be
anywhere else in the world,
but Russia.
how I would like to forget everything I don't know about you.
but your samizdat is clouding my heart,
your uncensored dream...
your God won't stop anointing me
when I long for your spring and the
bells in Kiev.
mary angela douglas 17 january 1986
