Oh Bid The Sweet Dove Back

and who will ravel back the fringed endings of  the lines

now and then a gleaming fitful line

breaks from the pack and would itself define

in Light but that you hold it captive there

and This is almost everywhere:

in the fissioning Poem without God

as with the blind in certain cases, cadences,

cadenzas

we see the progression the light telescoping

closing itself down, slight radiance then in the shadows till

not even in peripheries can it be found now

of what remains and so, to darkness bound had poetry

become in the world no world at all to lift us from the slough

and from a numbing pain that renders all music dead.

oh bid the sweet dove back alack alack

the vintage heart cries out in me

such liberty they have now

to spurn the light of God

to write about it all

from the outside looking in.

mary angela douglas 26 june 2021