Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Imprimatura

wrecked gold of  the far illuminations
is coming home
and moonlight sunk in

its own mirrors helplessly

I find forever
in the glazed word you speak.

but april blossoms on the wall

when you bind your luckless
clouds together

and you wound nothing.

imprint this with a spendthrift's sigh
with the knowledge that every colour breathes

the rose you gathered as if it were

long-ago

from very Light.


mary angela douglas 31 august 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

Startled Birds

over a bridge of clouds I passed
not looking at my reflection in the water
and it seemed to me there was no sound
when the harp of shadows passed
to no other


and that my heart was taken from me

by things no longer on earth.

then wind for me a harp of pearl

and I will stand
soundless on a bridge of clouds
with all around the startled birds

you folded into snow


II
sensing the clouds above the clouds
I tried to run-
finding the severed music, everywhere

forgetting how to walk


this loose stitching

always comes undone

undone


a thousand laments were launched;

they fell into foam...
and I am singing low, so low
by the edges of your seas

the startled birds of your lost

languages-

reprieved


mary angela douglas 27 august 2011







Thursday, August 25, 2011

Pegasus

these realities are so unformed
not like the immaculate visions
that once rose before us


when we were commissioned

with the first snowfall of
exquisite words

and the petals of the stars

drifted
in your so elaborate sleep-

these realities are so

unsolicited:

but we are unremaindered

and will not give our lives
just to be granted an interview.

even minus a "good job"

let the soul flame out from star to star,
not a horse to be installed

but to run through heaven, encrypted.


Pegasus!  My gem-bridled friend light

mint-green is the day
whenever we ride together:

seeding the clouds near the

office park with
Roses of Pure Vermeil,

we are never that professional

when immaculate visions rise before us.

mary angela douglas october 2009

HAS ANYONE SEEN MY ROSE VELVETEEN FLATS?

knocking the paper doors down
that they have made of You
I turned away,


not knowing where to go

with my child-sized suitcase, in
my red cloth shoes.

the clock of yearning's set to

endlessness and

I weep on pouring the news out to the wind

but it's like a ripped-out seam within
not knowing when I'll find

all my lost porches

floating backwards on the Tide
and my best dishes, ringed with ferns...

when one Word tolls the

bells that they have muted, smashed-
maybe snow-jeweled quietude
will return

but now I only find

that I am I
and dream for you even
without knowing how.

ethereal clouds will come

and their attendant angels
as if from an extended Trip:

bring me crushed violets

bunched
in silver ribbons strewn
the never-ending stars
the winding mists to live in-

mary angela douglas 25 august 2011

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Aslan*

[to Jesus the Christ, the Lion of Judah (the overcoming one...)]

the brigands go the other way;

calumny stares stone-statue dead
at the white-frost crossroads

in my head

suddenly everything
turned to song.

white flowers staunched

the senseless wounds
where late and long my soul had bled
and I cannot relate to you
how suddenly the winter fled.

everything suddenly turned to song

the hand upraised struck down
at last
and evil's anvil hatched and passed
flowed by You into
silver stars.

I wept at Your bright armies;

and I could only bow my head
when-

wolfish sorrows stalked away

and shadow-puppet Scorn

knew Dread.

suddenly everything turned to song

like a forever Eastertide
and we were finally by Your side

and couldn't be overthrown-


mary angela douglas 7 february 2010


*After C,S, Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

Facing The Dragons Down

through kingdoms now
as it was then
you tread a certain

inward path
while they line up again
to stare you through

on a very tiresome playground-

or hurl, with no one else around
a mere boulder or two
down the embankment.


don't ask me how
they know it's you with
a birthday message for

your ailing children
done up in maypole ribbons bright
and the fairytale hour-glass

sands on the low-end...
but they could find you
in their sleep

on the margrave's run-down highway-
and creepity creep creep
through the heat-

roiling their chartruese scales-
waving a finny fin-
casting a munching eye on

your last bit of raisin toast
with frosting...

or burping from an office window
just to throw you off-
a murky word in-between

presentations...

do not fear them;
let them rave:
thrashing the marigold window shades

beneath God's diamond and
discerning eye-

you may look swiftly all around
but no one else is there to pound.
they must mean, you.

don't be alarmed;
don't be concerned.
it just that it's your

turnity turn turn
To Be Facing the Dragons Down-

mary angela douglas 23 august 2011

A Lapidary Stillness Fills The Room

a lapidary stillness fills the room
while I'm too tired to hear
the angels singing. forgive me when

I say, oh God
that it seems hard to live this way
but I'm setting the scene the best that
I know how

and jewel by jewel,
as You did.


lay all your shaken griefs aside-
folding the opulent
shadows on the chair

not for the last time, yet-

while off in the distant
semi-precious Light
a heavy door opens and

then closes-

mary angela douglas 23 august 2011





Monday, August 22, 2011

Blake

[to William Blake]

I saw you walking

the hills of green.
angels on either side of you, conversing
and cherry-bought bells resounding
in the dove-sought skies such flame-tinged
clouds appearing:

yes and the fleece of

skies that you loved once-
the cirrus roses...

you were so happy with an ink-stained smile-

peeling a scroll of topaz from

a frayed coat pocket,

meant for the martyred poets.
you said: don't cry anymore
all consternation's fled, don't cry,
no rose is dead.

art is a shining ship, delivered:

the choken river's spanned.
the mocking charter's been revoked.

they hoped your vision was a sinking sun

marked by three crosses on a stolen hill,
but the day is a flower endlessly fluted,

and cut in crystal now

where tygers kept their radiant promise-
where darkness is banished

to a farther castle and the

face of the Lamb is so revealed
whenever we are speaking in our
sheer unfiltered gold

and realize

we are still alive my
bartered friend!

a bright wind drives your

mended sails toward home
with the diamond husk of all your
poems received, the

heart of it believed in when you say

that all your trees are filled with singing now
where nothing, nothing is a bane
how

blazingly the Light

of every poem remains-

mary angela douglas 22 august 2011, 2 december 2005,

Friday, August 19, 2011

Valentine With Doves On The Seven Last Words Of Christ

I am lost in the
Kingdom of the Heart
I said to no one living


since the day they felled the

King of it all-
seven swords run through my heart


seven swords and more

and oh the hilts
set with rubies


with russet diamonds

with the sunset of the world.

and such a vein of

jasper runs through
the soul's so pleached amazement standing still-

that I forget the words to

sing to you
a last border ballad.

my soul.

become the white dove's scar
and anodyne of mercy-

the cleft on the curl of the

last creamed wave
in this senseless valentine

shadow-box, shadowed,

shifted by unseen wires
and winds.

the dove cries out

there's blood on the track
there's blood on the track

and more, look back

to the fairytale motto
of snow-cut

delicate drastic cameo

and descent:

Be True.

in the version scalded

by fairies under broken glass-
scattering their gifts of light far

from - from the retreating henchmen

among last things.

all swords dissolve

with the help of God
who is also weeping

who is also weeping

oh dove, dove, dove

mary angela douglas 19 august 2011, 1 june 2010

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I Dreamed Of The Sea, Of The Children Of Lir

I dreamed of the sea, of the Children of Lir
coming through the mists of their childhood
unrecognizably

oh beyond reach

let words be fought for but
what am I supposed to say

when saints have courted endlessly

the hard and diamond edge of
your impossible retrieval?

when are you coming home

o vivid heart eluding
bereavement, banished wing-
are you carving the thick tiered

wedding cake mists as if they

belonged to you?
when will you find rest

beating the crystal air to a

fine snow over centuries;
are you very nearly free

or do you dream your muted

carillons below
have all passed on?

it is a real question.

are you?
stay alive can you

be carried sleeping into

deeper exiles over
God's bright shoulder?

it is a real question are you

finding no more countries left
for you

on earth...

I lived as some suggested

sending golden transcripts off
somewhere into space

from brilliant institutions no one ever heard of

and the envelope sealed with evensong and
all the mauve distances dissolving...

are you the one

bargained over at sales
not open to the general public-

subject to steering committees

charged
with capturing the data?

let us return, unopened,

frailer than snow and so unchartered
to live in Danish stories, after all-

dreaming of journeys

over long waters
looking at light

through the spent leaf

and the mottled cloud
as if at a kingdom
somehow lost to me

still still my own

prospective student,

employee, friend,
any person at all:

launched to the unfairytale-like

docket with a
mirage-like defense

jump over the railing!

there's no qualifying ground

for one so fey and the wild swans must
move through
the lilac foaming of their weariness.

it is also true

the glimmer of your sunset mind
is a sheen of no use to them at all

and will count against you at the agencies

more than the questions you leave

blank

when you're combing the waves
oh not

for 3 good references and a jacket

they can believe in.

then you'll descend, dear

Christmas-bright contestant, saint
like the exemplary

Children of Lir with your

one cloud-sleeve unfinished
down to the violet waterline at last:

caught up by sudden angels on command-

recommended by the wounded Trinity-

weeping poems and

the clear bells
of little stars

mary angela douglas 16 august, 14 august, 20 july 2011