Miss Havisham

for Charles Dickens...

it's the way the dress has folded into dust
as it hangs there that makes you feel
all time is rust

even the air you barely breathe there
where the seed pearls have gone grey
grey as the seas that washed up then

the dubious fortunes of men, their proclivites...

as before on forlorn shores made ever more desolate
Miss Havisham whisper the ghosts
and the whisper of it winters everything

though outside in the gardens it is early spring
all inside belies it.
you want to pick fresh bouquets in the melancholy

sunshine of her shipwrecked days

of myrtle, the kind of roses shown
in ancient valentines, with the clasping of hands
the coat of arms

but the wind whispers chivalry is dead

and the tinny music turns in a music box instead
with broken amethysts in the sky, rely on God
You try to say to her.

dreary is the way Miss Havisham

and this is where the sodden road lies
after long interminable rains.

oh take your cloak the one once lined with violet blue
see no visitors today in the oistritch feathered hat
all weddings now have melted into that

decrepit cake and the feast in cobweb ruin.

only the lilies remain. Miss Havisham
the yellowed pearls the tintype of a girl
whose dream was shed without a summer murmur

in the long ago that glacial snows revered.

dressed in mulberry you'll go out again some year
and drift between one sphere and another
whose ash had burnt out, no doubt 

Miss Havisham. you'll still search out

the infinity surrounding pointless souvenirs.
debris of all the years.
of all the years.

mary angela douglas 30 august 2019