The Poets of Exile

(for Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam, for Anna Akhmatova and to the Living God)

midpoint between the angels of what is merely lost

and what is irretrievable they had launched their small skiffs

upon the immense waters of dream of doom or

lifted their paper lanterns in the breezes of  neglect

amid the flowering plum or cherry

or adown, adorning the fields of ancient ice slipped into a crevasse

so vast as to be midpoint between the angels of one life

and another with all connections broken after tumultuous,

unforgiving storms;

their hearts. were torn. on the coast near Trieste or farther away

Oh Tristia, Lamentations...

fires sparking fitfully into space from disused wires...burned

across the bays across a single filament 

so that there is another set of cablegrams now

all saying the same thing (I love you who

have forgotten My Name)

unknown to the former inmates or future mechanistic

biographers comfortably sorting through what was

typed out in solitary never;yet

wafted through the clouds the homing clouds by their intensity

until it disappeared in rainfall never reaching

the destination intended nevertheless so silverly

seeding the wilderness beyond the power to say

I loved you as I loved freedom since both were illusory

on earth inconceivably far from home

incalculable immaculate wanderers, century

flowers they bloomed for a radiant hour

that now are gone.the orchids of their aftermirage

making me weep from fortressed shore to shore

these tears, once more,

Cassandra-like, from the long before.

mary angela douglas 14 july 2021