The Green The Leaf Reverts To Should Earth Forget April

"God's name like a huge bird flew out of my breast.

Before me the thick mists swarm;

Behind me, an empty cage."

-Osip Mandelstam

[for Nadezhda Mandelstam-

and on the history of Poetry]

Poetry is the rain returning to the clouds

when everything else has overflowed and there are no

more promontories or the green

the leaf reverts to should earth forget april;

cast aside,or her still-spinning gold-leafed out of

Time from the last tower-

 though

princes do not come this way anymore

nor merchants seeking roses for their daughters

after all ships fail.

wounded flowers in place of tears

should flow or the shadows of candles lengthen

to engulf the world or violet horizons crash

with their hour glasses

to the ground

like ribbons a child forgot in the grass

and all these symbols come to pass

and I and I -it's no longer dew pearled,

is it? all they were born to say

from holy dread

churned into a thin butter,

begging bread.

I have locked my mind with a golden key

said she quite velvetly, turning away,

brocading the emptiness, while

song flew out his window into Space

and did not hear the

deliquescing angels breaking down

snowing and 

snowing on oblivious waters

lifting into the clouds oh is it

forever or 

only, year on year

that canyons gape,

losing their colours

or do I only dream

the swish of rainbow roping

rains descending...

through the redacting languages,

begin, He said, the King of music, mists:

again, from the beginning...

mary angela douglas 22 june 2014;rev. 24 april 2015

Note on the poem: redacting in the sense of censoring or obscuring something; also euphoniously related to reducting or making smaller...