I Saw The Lights Go Down On Vivid Lines Written For Heart's Ease

I saw the lights go down on vivid lines written for heart's ease

and not to please the kings, the courts I saw the curtain close

and my soul on oblivious waters: ships without sails, clouds

without moons, music leaving the rooms forever.

caw like this like this the crows told the children of Eden

seizing the stage, darkening the skies, removing the

shine from apples, stars, blossoms...

He decreed in love, for love's sake, alone

we're losing time, mourned the tappers on their keys

revising everything

productively, and minimizing, mimicing laconically

filling the moat with tears and no one could cross over;

filling the coffers of their circuses. what is gold said the Soul you shifted out of sight in your modernity to please

the new kings and their courts, you thieves-

to burnish your spot in the spotlight

how you've kept up with trends.

but some remember:

there's one more spinning wheel in the kingdom;

words were cherished once, we will defend defend

the lovely prayers you say,unsay

but Keats said " as if a rose should shut and

be a bud again", our flowering language cannot

be unsaid though you have stripped the 

elaborate Tree and poets left for dead who

died for Truth or Beauty, it's the same said

Emily whom you have shamed

and opened the dungeons for those

you banned from your magazines, your wilting coteries-

who loved these banished snows, the bright veil lifted

over the Unseen, the mysteries, the lavish dreamed.

now forward thinking teachers scold when we quote them,

critics mock, you're not accessible

but they were lent by saints who went before.

what have you done with them?

who let you through the door and

where have you thrown them overboard

I cried, alone, bereft-

oh what is your disease they said

because I mourned diminished Beauty

nobility trod down. regardless, I raved on

they're murderers ringing the curtain down

and locking up the Muse, key in their pocket,

satisfied-

and winning awards for this?

-and those of us who know what you have done:

decry decry- until we die

your buying up of the bruised wings

and selling, selling everything

making a splash and not in Icarian seas...

mary angela douglas 26 august 2014