[to the poet, William Blake to the Pearl Poet
to Time itself...]
I saw the milk white pearl dissolve
that shone like gold in the mouth of God
the hidden Word of the year to come
the glory of the foreign tongue in translation:
for Beauty has become foreign here.
the letter that you wrote to God
on both sides of the paper.
the midnight nation tried to sleep.
without the dream of God,
we sighed, in rusting armor.
the seraph sleeved departed.
old tears have latched onto the winds,
and it hurts most of all what
the green glide of the Holy Ghost surmises.
that we could have lost our only friend
Jesu, in you.
the Word beads jeweled in the dark
the one He pressed into your heart
the one that sparkles before speaking.
oh speak me into Light I cried
that I may trace the bride of language coronated
through a thousand May times,
the milk white Pearl instead of sin,
the new made Heaven, cherubim,
the haunting of the world
made sane.
the solace of the sweeping rains
that herald exorbitant Spring.
the page torn out of a child's notebook,
like an angel's wing, snow-breathed into existence:
lily of the valley sheen
hand print in plaster, and rosied thing,
the return to singing.
mary angela douglas 9 january 2017
