And In It, The Sound Of Seas

the shell is poetry and in it, the sound of seas
and if not, this is not poetry to me
minus the sea, as Arnold said and poignantly in

the ebb and the flow of his Dover Beach
hearing as Sophocles, a sense of the tragic
and more than this, the music of it

and this they have lost. the note of melancholy, more...
they have lost the sea and the sound of the sea
and the music of this and the oars

and still they say, poetry. poetry.
and mean polemic. mean, my time to shine
mean plain potatoes any old time

without musk roses and the eglantine

and don't know what they mean
even by their own definitions
which seem less their own

than spindrift owns the waves
and words that do not sing
ring from no rafters green with praise

oh, nothing rings at all
and the bell towers
are listless. and the bells rust.

only in the wind can I still hear and in my mind
as in old manuscripts something clearly chiming
poetry. the singe and the surge of it sublime,

preserved and I am like a small tree in the wind
and subject to this dreaming.
and will not relinquish the crown of it.

though poems die with me
even.

Poetry itself.

mary angela douglas 14 december 2017