Tundra ,Perhaps The Silver Forests, Somewhere, Something Said

[to the poet Osip Mandelstam]

"We live, not feeling the ground under our feet,
no one hears us more than a dozen steps away..."
-Osip Mandelstam

and to Lydia Chukovskaya

the white owl whittled the silence down:

who will comfort whom? who. 

will anyone? who.

bright feathers descend

bright feathers descend

but there are no angels.

I thought, for a moment,

a foot on the snow:then I looked back:

the crunch of the silver pathways.

I only listened.

I did not know.

who. who whittled the white owl

covered in mists far whiter than he

and we're so far in the mists

who will ever hear our speaking

mary angela douglas 8 december 2014