For Poetry

everything she held in her hands turned to snows;
the starlight above diminishing where she had departed
no longer sacrosanct in the little villages of the world.

and the evergreens shed needles under the moonlight's
vast expanse and this was of her going; the trees weeping
what they could; the little clouds leaving, with her,
shod in her threadbare slippers of gold.

so diffident she had become, inured to Cold
and begging for crumbs from the new.
and in this vultured darkness some,

a lovely few-
wept for what was lost.

in the accounting systems of the world
who will account for this.
Beauty spurned from door to door

the citadels closed.
they will marshal
their armies of words

(the ones that they have left.)
and make new words, impossible to sing.
and numbness will spread and get all the prizes.

and curl the lip and the modern mien
as those of antiquity, the same, before us did:
scorning true music and the Soul.

it is still the same she wept into hands of snow
still.
not vanishing...

mary angela douglas 9 january 2015