One Day The Poets Of Earth Will Sing Again

[To- 

"the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars..."

-Dante (trans. John Ciardi, 1961)

(and for my mother, Mary Adalyn, on her Immemorial Birthday)]

one day the poets of earth will sing again

forgetting their eclipse, the early deaths, the

wilderness they knew

the taxes on the heart.  the hem of trebled Beauty scorned

and traded for stale biscuits, the anisette coffees.

the endless fevers and no cooling irised hand:

the accolades awarded to darkness

trampling to dust the psalter of the free oh and the tearless,

making no sound.

consigning iridescence to the ground.

the raven-plucked sorrow down, adown the silver branch

no longer inscribed, the surveillance of the lovely.

manuscripts deferred, forgotten, ridiculed;

and shot at dawns so unrehearsed, the quietly embroidered

age on age-

painstakingly, by the confused.

"newness" drowning them again;

cooking up whole brassy pots of Stone

Soup with shriveled parsnips for the

entire neighborhood squawking

false change, small change quenching the candles of the Sun.

fooling no one, really.

one day the star fraught messengers sent

as gleaming  doves from the Ark will live again green as First Green

green on first gold could ever be dreamed to be and then

above receding waters they will turn, mid-air

astonished, astonishingly

flawlessly to diamond fire, instead

of beating the futile air and scarred-

marveling marveling

that the hour of the smashed urn is dead

and all this rising and setting at an end

no gorgeousness, gone

and each word glorified and each page

brightening hue on hue for always now the

linen on linen the snow phrases yet

no longer melting from view on the funeral trains

crossing continents unseen- 

sped by the merchandisers clean out of the Picture

as language is bled dry. I-

no more, I whispered to the ghosts of beauty

sensing a glacial change, finding the silver buttons made fast,

the golden thread for the children's winter coats: and

unpacked from a toy suitcase, dancing by the

miniature rosegush* of first syllables, my school scissored paper snowflakes,

multifoiled gum-starred universe, for you

and say to the pale blue corner of a room and I do-

unchristened yet by Christmas:

make way, the glitter train is coming through: 

Manifest, Your rainbow in the clouds remains

leaving everything to the children, said at last:

the winged hearts fluttering the valentines unclasped are everywhere now

oh every heartbeat word on word is jeweled not as morning dew

that disappeared till no one cried for the dewdrop vanishing, "alas" 

for all flowers under the boots of those half-way

inclined to crush the lilies-

to raze the orchards in full bloom-

but it spans the reeling stars, the heart splintered years

and sun on sun as Dante said

or may have said, through prismed tears,

(or small "i" under the chandeliered heavens)

impelled by the Love that urged the horses on-

mary angela douglas 1 december 2013

P.S.I really did intend to say rosegush a made-up compound word that expresses my childhood state of mind with pinpoint accuracy, my endless enchantment with roses (even if it did start out as a typo)