Tell Us A Little Bit About Yourself

a long way down the violet road

I tried to go.

it vanished in the shifting winds,

the snow.  Oh, God, are you still here?

I cried out in the cold

and on the frozen prairies,

all alone.

then flowery meadows arose.

arose.

I am a wild rose planted by His hand

in a language now foreign.

a long way down the violet road

I tried to go

with diamonds in my hands

to feed the diamond birds

of singing.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2013

Beyond All Tithing

giving You back the gold of the sun:

the honey-gold and the amber.

giving You back the white-gold

of the moon and rightfully,

the blue stars and the red.

giving you back the green

wind, her April sources

and the rose slip slipping into the Dreaming

all over again.

Oh how did it cost so little:

the clouded violet in the snows:

the tunes still turning my music-box soul.

it's You in the marigold darkness everywhere

I know I know I know

in the rushing gold of the words You gave us:

the honey-gold and the amber

and the white gold of the moon

mary angela douglas 27, 28 january 2013

The Last Republic In The Sun

[to Miro Zdrahal]

we all survive with just one scrap of sky,

the bluest one-

even with no boundaries left

to cross, when the storms come;

every soldier for himself, the histories go.

and come again.

we can survive with just one

scrap of sky, and the green light all around filtered through the trees and

through our tears and through long

aeons of His smile.

our God,

the only one:

the last Republic in the sun.

mary angela douglas 23 january 2013

A Harp Is Weeping At The Door

[to Christ the Lord, even so...]

a harp is weeping at the door:

I have found an inconsolable stillness here;

there were jewels

they didn't come back for

even though the moonlight read:

here you will find the harp at the door.

it will be weeping.

now the glissando of the things that did not happen

is struck is struck down

by angels sparing you the memory of what was never intended

spoken into the funnel of jeweled afternoon.

or maybe it is that you had merely dropped

in leaves the colour of rust

the fairytale instructions

on the way to the Castle

so that some have turned to magic in no refined mood

self-spelled in the spume of the proud clouds drifting over:

itinerant traces of a yearning music

far from the range of their hearing it, now.

oh think but not too long on those

oh those-

who labored hammering

into such a soundless arc

the jeweled manifest of His singing

mary angela douglas 13-22 january 2013

Fragment For Rilke Inlaid By Akhmatova And Dante

the last Christmas train has left the station.

beatitude is drifting with the sun.

all things have gathered flight

for the last poets rising

on a golden wind

now that frost has cut the 

moon out of the skies.

and the snow in the heart keeps sifting down

keeps sifting down

all along the kleig-white evenings

where you whispered to yourself

and the First Angel, out of hearing

I am no longer cold.

mary angela douglas 13. 14., 19 january 2013

The Cyclops in REM Sleep (Dreams Of A Wedding)

the bride in the mirror of his Eye.

discards the sun, the smaller planets;

why would she need them now or

the woolly path from childhood, cherry bright

her mother hemmed in close firm stitches overnight

that wouldn’t ravel out

so she couldn’t catch cold coming home from the Anywhere

and shod

in her merry silk slippers, singing…

and radiant with her own radiance, still-

she seeks Forever, stepping out of the Chancery

telling herself, this must be the good I dreamed of:

while something murmurs

who let the Thunder in

through the ash trees

and every bough  is quivering

no.  it isn’t.

then everyone smiles so much

admiring the gown…and says she’s the

prima lily ringed by bridesmaids, after all

in pale Giselle her afterlife hues

the bride in the mirror of his eye  grew

vastly small; then

vastness flew

crowned with something glittery so they knew

it wasn’t her, how could it be

boarding a train that wouldn’t come back

because there is no station

and she’ll awake to a  matinee scattering now

of a dream within a dream of all that she believed

 in, forfeited

she must she must she must the Chorus chimes

dissolve into a perpetual Roaring as if, on cue;

they’ll say though not so openly as before

it’s like the wave purling from the shore my dear my dear

when it hits the rocks;

you’ll get the hang of it,

we’ll help you till you do…

except except the wave turns back she thinks

(while she still can) and is free, that way

occasionally in the tide of things from day to day

to talk to God or the winds in spring

without anyone knowing  anything

or having to.

but days have gone or just grown dim

while she’s so quiet, turned within and can’t be found

in the fractioning mirror of his eye of childlike puzzlement.

not quite, distress

that there’s a gaping where the green wind blew

sometime in April

and the kaleidoscope doesn’t work

mary angela douglas 8 january 2013