It's Only When The Parroting Colors Seem

it's only when the parroting colors seem

to dwarf Your Light I cannot breathe.

and I have lost my arctic dream and the

holy quiet You had laid aside to set the stars in.

my Crystal tuned to shimmering.

why have they reft all sound from sense?

the heart from everything.

why call it singing at that pitch

when it's attention that is garnered and

not Your laddered music fetching gold on

gold, forever modulated, reaching farther

than the soul believed from childhood

ever could be-how high is the sky you whispered

filling the cup of Beauty overfull.

then let us depart this scene

throwing ourselves away

if this must be-

beyond heart's need or recompense;

beyond the spoiled frame, reeling

it all in and the numbered games.

unearthly the

harps are wounded at my door

of all the poets sent before

and each with no other end than this:

through polar night or wilderness or slogging

through the witlessness-

learning, someday, to sing true

mary angela douglas 24 november 2013

Note on the Poem:  of course, it isn't only at my door...how ridiculous would that be -but at anyone's door reader or writer, dear human being who feels this way.

We all have this marvelous, incredible heritage especially of lyric poetry in every nation, in every language, and also (if we choose) a world-wide inheritance of Beauty.  The sorrow is that in the drive to be new, and inventing it all again from the beginning (with each new generation) we will live ignorant to the riches that

others died to give us.  This is how I always feel now.