Relevance/All These Bright Soldiers Falling In The Mist

[to Sidney Lanier, the American Keats (1842-1881)]

is it too late to let you know

the green shade in your marshes

lingers still-

and the tree-tiered cathedrals, depth-on-depth that

you believed in?

who can replace all those

born with a feeling for music;

still less, the few

whom Music loved:

crowding Beauty in a

handful of poems

on less than a lifetime's sigh-

it takes that long

to understand

all these bright soldiers

falling in the mist

that we have left behind-

mary angela douglas 1 march 2012

Note on the poem:  on the question of relevance in poetry in my opinion as Emily Dickinson inferred all those are relevant who died for Truth or Beauty no matter what the "cool club" says...