EPIPHANY OF THE WHITE APPLES

fr Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam
to the music of Messian's Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus

I don't know why white apples in the frost

seem suddenly to sob;

reading Mandelstam three in the morning,

I dreamt of God, His marred meridians and pearl;

upwards where the gnats swirl angelically

lighter than the air they almost dwell in;alighting on

the purple lines dividing these geographies, my dusks,

may clouds float, swanlike then, bright dust,
in the ballet cirrus of Akhmatova

in an in-between time. I try to rhyme

Him with something else, deeply felt

but it's too cold

where after decades throw an arced lights’ lost and emerald shine

as if they know

this Neva is not mine.

and who am I

to make my petitions here

on the other side of the world, the room, I fear

assorted people will not believe

I do love Russian poetry;

where the moon is made of glass.

will it shatter at last? will I

the milk bright pieces hold in a wounded perigee

I ask like a child from a hand towel embroidered

folk tale. not my own.

God knows I’m bound up in the story though

I won't turn and become salt...if that’s your worry

“it's not your past”, a thin murmuring grows,

how do you know I plead to no one heeding me

what words came to me in a midnight hour

and laid down their shields

or that the blanched petals fleet so lingeringly by me

on this heavy darkness, sown

as an antique honey, scarcely bottled.

I don't know why

white apples in the frost...

made me cry unto the light vexed distances:

sheared seraphim may guard the long scars

lightly felt now, the buzz of

summer flies; soul freedom's reedy tunes so

lemon starred.

no longer die. oh live jewel jangled as

Christmas hymns to the infant Jesus should be.

one candle grown lilac in a perpetual Spring

precariously I perch among worlds and

So.

they sigh, it's you again and

won't even let me in

for the dress ball, seemingly less than Cinderella,

packing one useless shoe

I’ll look within

wandering down Mandelstam Avenue,

a quarter note's brimmed with wonders and

remote viewing as through a screen of ancient snows, all

things being foreign, suddenly parted

on a mysterious stage, oh Star, my star

where I, unaccountably, not knowing where You are

but in a blinding Grace

have all the parts by heart.

mary angela douglas 10 september 2016/3 january 2019;24 june 2019