To Kaye, Lost Among The Ice Puzzles

 {(Gerda’s lament, from a song cycle for The Snow Queen and with a bouquet of mignonette)}

(and To Hans Christian Andersen for his fable, The Snow Queen)

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how will you weep then

in such a glacial land

or will you wait for the thaw when

you will take the census of their tears

you whom I knew for years

and no longer recognize because

you do not recognize me!

though in dreams I hold the sun in my hands

till it burns quite through

beseeching you oh K.

remember when we played

the world would be always green?

and we would be king and queen

and oh the cracked mirror in your eyes

has wounded all flowers forever

K will you never never look upon summer again

without your compass with the surveyor’s kit

she gave you last Christmas breathing on the glass

of your paralysis.

I look for roses but they are spent

For the little balcony with the geraniums

where we were  but all all has whirled away

losing the laughing  the brightening names and the shine on the 

waters in a kingdom calculating everything down

to the last son and daughter

down to the bitter weeds of all regret.

mary angeladouglas 28 august 2020