let's get away from rubber stamped poems
at over cheerful workshops the pained smiles
of the resident MFAs on the back covers
the chopping off of refulgent vines and lines and lines
the musk rose and the eglantine
let poetry arise embroidered again
with anything the soul requires.
I want to hear what Matthew Arnold
imagined Sophocles heard
in the retreating wave
or felt on a moonlit balcony
overhearing past imminence, the sounds of war.
you have all traded your birthrights for
no something elusive, beautiful and strange.
rearrange your priorities as they say.
I should say so, if I dared
colouring the moon a different shade.
abiding time and the political hoi poloi.
and learn to sing the red rose bordered song
the way Yeats meant: and let it soar!
music and word as one.
from an individual core.
the strings struck murmuring Thy heart
God has lured back no longer cold
into His nets of gold.
mary angela douglas 22 september 2019
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