[for Maurice Ravel]
reading the snows as though they were blind music,
one day the numbness will flow
into la vallee de cloches*
becoming flowers.
now, it is not so; it is the blind reading of snow
falling always past you,the velvet hours,
past the window sills, past the old untils
in the folk songs and where the brier and the rose
will never be one.
what is oneness to the blind snows, to the music
falling apart, to the frozen heart of the skater in
front of the toy castle?
all, all through the looking glass!
the iced and the sudden
fountaining of the stephanotis...
and there is the tin soldier. home again;
the fleur de lis bunched in his hand;
unsure of how to stand: as it was, before?
replete with the little silver trumpet?
or pausing for what to say that is not made of tin
when a blast of wind unsettles him
and carries him away
mary angela douglas 21 january 2016
* “La vallee des cloches,” reference in the poem to the piano piece
of the same title by Maurice Ravel;the fifth piece in Ravel’s Miroirs.
reading the snows as though they were blind music,
one day the numbness will flow
into la vallee de cloches*
becoming flowers.
now, it is not so; it is the blind reading of snow
falling always past you,the velvet hours,
past the window sills, past the old untils
in the folk songs and where the brier and the rose
will never be one.
what is oneness to the blind snows, to the music
falling apart, to the frozen heart of the skater in
front of the toy castle?
all, all through the looking glass!
the iced and the sudden
fountaining of the stephanotis...
and there is the tin soldier. home again;
the fleur de lis bunched in his hand;
unsure of how to stand: as it was, before?
replete with the little silver trumpet?
or pausing for what to say that is not made of tin
when a blast of wind unsettles him
and carries him away
mary angela douglas 21 january 2016
* “La vallee des cloches,” reference in the poem to the piano piece
of the same title by Maurice Ravel;the fifth piece in Ravel’s Miroirs.
