[for the incomparable novelist, George Du Maurier
who wrote a very strange, beautiful book than when you read it was more inscribed on the dreaming mind than on the pages of the antique book you held in your hands...]
Peter Ibbetson, for a long time
have I gazed through the iron gates
leading into the garden of the time
your dream was dreamed a century or so
before mine and yet
the words written for you
seem entwined with everything
I thought about as a child seeing on TV
the film with Gary Cooper etched in
my soul beyond comprehension.
and the thunder rolls outside the gates;
the kingdom shifts
and heaven seems lost to us.
the prison of blind nights awaits
and jailers with a bitter streak
yet somehow there is a crack
and a fissure in our grief
we can't explain
through which the lilac light
comes down again, surrounding you,
Peter Ibbetson...
there where the dust curls
there, my bouquet of mignonette,
small roses have I cast
as into an equator broken and I know
there is a country called dreaming true
and I know I will be coming back to it, if
not to you, then Peter Ibetsson to
the gates of very God so jeweled with light;
to the mist revealing what
I always in my childishness, delight
insisted even, bullied in school: oh, by all of you then o
this, this love is true.
mary angela douglas 9 april 2016
who wrote a very strange, beautiful book than when you read it was more inscribed on the dreaming mind than on the pages of the antique book you held in your hands...]
Peter Ibbetson, for a long time
have I gazed through the iron gates
leading into the garden of the time
your dream was dreamed a century or so
before mine and yet
the words written for you
seem entwined with everything
I thought about as a child seeing on TV
the film with Gary Cooper etched in
my soul beyond comprehension.
and the thunder rolls outside the gates;
the kingdom shifts
and heaven seems lost to us.
the prison of blind nights awaits
and jailers with a bitter streak
yet somehow there is a crack
and a fissure in our grief
we can't explain
through which the lilac light
comes down again, surrounding you,
Peter Ibbetson...
there where the dust curls
there, my bouquet of mignonette,
small roses have I cast
as into an equator broken and I know
there is a country called dreaming true
and I know I will be coming back to it, if
not to you, then Peter Ibetsson to
the gates of very God so jeweled with light;
to the mist revealing what
I always in my childishness, delight
insisted even, bullied in school: oh, by all of you then o
this, this love is true.
mary angela douglas 9 april 2016
