Saturday, March 11, 2017

On The Great Novelists Neglected

perhaps they think we have forgotten
those passages where mignonette blooms
on dresses of pale blue silk

where people confer over great or small matters

keeping their distance.
where a letter can spell doom

a gesture, finality.

the sound of carriage wheels speed happiness,
a fireside out of the rains.

perhaps the flower pressed into a book

would live again
the margins begin to snow...

blow the dust off your indifference

and let the old novels
glow

said a ministering angel once

where you almost lingered
in an out of the way shop.

isn't it enough to know

they lived once, and wrote and wrote
all this at times without a drop of mercy

shown to them


and isn't it amiss we have left

their gardens alone
and left their heroines adrift

their heroes far from home

because we are modern.
and do not know

what we do not know.


mary angela douglas 11 march 2017