[for the Irish-Belgian poet, Martin Burke
and to all the poets of Persia and Istanbul of fabled beauty remembered
to the poetry of Armenia as treasured by the poet Osip Mandelstam-
and to anyone's child peering into the rainwater puddle and thinking: there is another country there, made of the mirrored trees and clouds, of...
the brocades spilling out from your Bazaars o Lord
delight the heart
and we will drink coffee from golden thimbles
cried your children in disguise, like
the grown-ups, arguing the finer points
of Andromeda or the price of bread;
or is the candy sweet enough as
little, native oranges?
and will the sesame-sprung door swing wide enough then
so that we may become
my Lord's own jewelry, forever
where we could in long content just be
mere sparkles, prismed, reveries:
of your spiraling rainbows, Lord.
or are the children made of
rosewater and halvah
and everything that was said
between starlight and starlight.
well, it must be poetry
spilling out from your Bazaar
as turquoise, ribboning, shimmering as
patterns of birdsong
can ever be
or exotic roses, spun
on a single rubied thread
said the weavers dreaming
secretly of whole countries, coteries,
languages missing the words for tears;
the phrase for,
forever leaving home
mary angela douglas 16 november 2013
Note on the Poem: Andromeda in the poem is a reference to the galaxy Andromeda and its contradictions and mysteries from the point of view of astronomy and from its high visibility on moonless nights emotionally representing to me at least: one view of Poetry- it is not being used at all as an allusion to the Greek myth of Andromeda etc. which I find, at best, distressing.
