[for the murdered poet Osip Mandelstam
in the imagined voice of his widow, Nadezhda]
lilting, with the lemon stars in love
how is it your gaze fell out of the earth
even when you were here
so that almost no one recognized you
in the last the hounding years.
little you cared,
poet made of clouds
maker of all my feasts and merriment
that where you tread
the down at heel districts,
the earth glistened.
did no one listen?
who pocketed the gold of your lines, your name?
scarce tokens in exchange, you with your secrets
and little else,
only God really could have,
maker of the lemony stars
of every place oh still
you are and are not.
I braid my forget-me-nots
deep blue into the nights
imagining you in the weirs of a world
invisible to me
on an afternoon like those we shared,
my presentiments
my turning wind too suddenly cold
I met you: early or late
and I will wait what decades are required
to see you yet, eternally
and hesitate here near the
wheeling leaves thinking
you might have left somehow
the bright gate open:
so I might pass
the grief is so fresh.
this trace, transcribed
I feel but cannot say
of the poems you wrote
anyway
despite rank scorn;
clouding the mirror with your breath
even while it broke like a heart
and I drift like a torn out page
from a notebook
you've bestowed
in all your fars and nears inscribed
no longer your dear, my dear
where the weather will not clear:
but receiving this:
marvelous, snipped, oh sweet tailor
from your cloak of invisibility-
this, this largesse of beauty
in our wilderness
from some o too brief
fairytale foretold...
where I'll grow old
where the mosses drip
all on my own
not turning to stone;
lamenting your eclipse.
mary angela douglas 23 september 2015
in the imagined voice of his widow, Nadezhda]
lilting, with the lemon stars in love
how is it your gaze fell out of the earth
even when you were here
so that almost no one recognized you
in the last the hounding years.
little you cared,
poet made of clouds
maker of all my feasts and merriment
that where you tread
the down at heel districts,
the earth glistened.
did no one listen?
who pocketed the gold of your lines, your name?
scarce tokens in exchange, you with your secrets
and little else,
only God really could have,
maker of the lemony stars
of every place oh still
you are and are not.
I braid my forget-me-nots
deep blue into the nights
imagining you in the weirs of a world
invisible to me
on an afternoon like those we shared,
my presentiments
my turning wind too suddenly cold
I met you: early or late
and I will wait what decades are required
to see you yet, eternally
and hesitate here near the
wheeling leaves thinking
you might have left somehow
the bright gate open:
so I might pass
the grief is so fresh.
this trace, transcribed
I feel but cannot say
of the poems you wrote
anyway
despite rank scorn;
clouding the mirror with your breath
even while it broke like a heart
and I drift like a torn out page
from a notebook
you've bestowed
in all your fars and nears inscribed
no longer your dear, my dear
where the weather will not clear:
but receiving this:
marvelous, snipped, oh sweet tailor
from your cloak of invisibility-
this, this largesse of beauty
in our wilderness
from some o too brief
fairytale foretold...
where I'll grow old
where the mosses drip
all on my own
not turning to stone;
lamenting your eclipse.
mary angela douglas 23 september 2015
