Neither Leaf Nor Bloom Have They Left

(against the dismissal of lyrical poetry as "unsustainable")

neither leaf nor bloom have they left

but only the desultory branch where no bird sings

in this, the artifice of winter prolonged

where song is not, nor Spring, and the heart diminished

and exultantly.

is poetry finished? laconically the magazines ask,

the small presses

pressing no vintage out

as if they cared. gone is the soul's bright task (to where?)

as the trending wordsmiths squeal, the hooligans:

we're in charge now.

on a dare, I send out ariadne's thread

and find instead of Chaos

the covenant rainbows of God intact

who leafs and blossoms in the craving winds

despite the shills, the indomitable shrill

Immune, and the overarching Lyric. still;

beginning and ending forever beginning again

Him will I serve

with my small bush and its sparrow madly caroling

down to the marrow I feel dismiss it how they will

the burnished tree of Poetry cannot be forced to unshine

less than it was wrought when poets caught

eternal fires in their poems and were not ashamed of it

and carried the moon like a searchlight in their eyes

who on the earth, wept for beauty openly, and undisguised

commiserating with the rains and not the academies

that man should choose to be monosyllabic again

and deaf and dumb and blind with clobbering banners upraised

with wings of lead outspread-

that this should be praised in lieu of the beautiful!

mary angela douglas 22 november 2021;10 february 2022

1Mary Angela Douglas