why should we live waiting for the days to end
why not pretend you are already immortal
well, your soul is.
it takes the strain off
suddenly you are feather light
you could be snow
you could even be the skies
the rustle of angels
going by
the birds from early lullabies
the ensign of the Rose perennial
and divine.
mary angela douglas 31 august 2022;28 february 2023
I wonder if we'll be on the other side of music one day
ushered in with pink programmes
or you will swing on the gate of it
as you did before, roller skating
in preludes, wading through scales., Scarlatti
geranium coloured.
will the notes sound like crystals
falling;will we still admire the azaleas?
will Grandmother spell out tone poems
while we listen to small records
of the great composers;
remember, when we're away
the reticence of Beethoven
how he was charged with Light
after the rains, the wind shaking the leaves free of raindrops.
will the sheet music be scattered through the rose garden
because we left the windows open
or glimpsed in the pink nightlight
short songs on the page, arranged.
our faces in cameo infant profile;the toy pianos at rest
and then, the nocturnes.the almond trees somewhere,
blossoming.
on the other side of the world.
it seems so distant now
the way we dreamed it then:
both hands on the keys
the gardenias, scented through the back screen door
now we are carried each on such a wave
through portals on a ship that wasn't there before
we never booked passage on.
you said in your sleep a baby corsage!
I know you must have in your rabbiting dreams
with the guardian angels and the metronome;
this is Heaven
this is home where
music goes on and Mama sings our birthdays
rose light through the curtains in the afternoons.
may it always be.and near the pines.
after a dry season
you will lift the piano lid
like a sunrise.
and small bouquets will arrive
for the recital.
mary
angela douglas 14 january 2020
dedicated with great respect and admiration and in all their generations to Maxim D. and Karen Lasser Shrayer...
beautiful, on the lake of my dreams float the swans
innumerably
in a light that is hushed and jeweled:
crystal precipitate!
in a prelude that indicates the whole ballet
I too that is my soul each night would alight
or on enameled afternoons, flashpoints of Beauty,
to thread through death the ferrier warnings in even one
shimmering thread;
to perfect such floating seclusion
whatever epoch we are stranded in.
how can there be sin
in a world where the swan appears, the swans
as from Tuonela or Hans Andersen, Pavlova,
mythically, waiting for the great bells to ring
out of their legends into our entranced hearing,
seeing, feeling.
I too have sounded my griefs in the foreign ballets
awash in wonder beyond all fearing,
beyond any country known or unknown
and where will I come home
to say whatever it means
this fine iridescence, this pearled thunder
mirage forever pealing wherever seen
in the hall of memories or of dreams, in the public garden
for a day tripped Space
or in all of Art if only to pray
in the merest trace upon strange waters:
now you will drift
after long tribulations. sifting the mysterious.
and in the plumage of the freed.
mary angela douglas 30 august 2022
old coins I have found beneath the ruins
old coins not to save perhaps to spend
on finding the memory of God again
old coins like tears I could not shed
for the living or the dead
though each one shines a sunset tear
a single century or a year
near the aqueduct half washed in the seas
the sea of Time that's ebbing from me.
they shine with a familiar shine
they bear an inscription half Divine
oh where will I spend them
what will they buy
now that the night is drawing nigh
old coins I have found and wept to see
an odd inscription of love for me
a song half flung from Calvary
a patina formed by the years from home
a rose gold sigh on a foreign wind.
mary angela douglas 30 august 2022
can these lilies be transposed
I asked my grandmother in a waking dream
in between the seams of childhood in a twilight light
light purple it is or later we called it lavender
once we knew the word, the words and the colour of
lavender blue and that little song
I wished I had asked her about that music
the way she looked at it how it lodged in her soul
about music for the pianoforte she seemed to know everything
everything is music I could say I would have said then
or sung in a roundelay
and I did feel without saying it the lilies could be transposed
why not as flowers should have that capability
drifting on the waters of Monet or Debussy perhaps
memorial
leaning toward the sun or under the moon looking different
perfuming the air with silver for as long as the dream time runs.
her Liebestraum.
her hands, christening the keys.
making my Grandfather weep.
mary angela douglas 29 august 2022;28 february 2023
so what if they scatter our flotillas of light
with their little pink birthday candles
on aome other shore they will be dawning
beyond the masquerades, the predictable awnings
we will find the unshaped gardens again
the wild rose music and our pure hearted friends
the beautiful fields of what has been;
who owns the light
serenade it to the lunch time crowds
when you haven't even a quarter for eclairs
whisper to God what they won't permit or bear
to heck with their glares
the night bird sings
the moon in rings is haloed still
call it what you will, a retrograde star
the need to seek the very Far From Here
since childhood. really
to disappear in a Christmas mood
where there isn't any other news
only raspberries and fresh cream
nor ever of dreaming be disabused.
mary angela douglas 29 august 2022;28 february 2023
gold is the moment then the moment
turns grey
cloud after cloud must I assay
when light is gone
faith carries on
pale is the morning
and the morning doesn't change
the sky distressed
and the blue diamond rain
pours into the streets
with a dreamless refrain
but faith and the music
somehow remain
naming the sorrow
that has no name.
mary angela douglas 29 august 2022
for the English poets, for holy poetry
I dreamed of England returned to herself
and the bitter knights' reconciliations;
Albion, coming clear in the mists
and the cherry carol branching
and ah, the Dream of the Rood
in jeweled bloom.
I will leap up to God my God
and see the angels rustling in the trees
where once the poet William Blake
fell to his knees and understood
that poetry is certain good
illuminating praise.
the sea of faith is verging in the dark
the ghost poet soldiers mark their place
and turn again homeward in His grace
to the place they loved
the lanes all blossom filled
the lovely strand...
and all their words
are like a field revued
renewed by High Command
with madrigals strewn..
and not excised
la vita nuova, enterprise
from which we dare not turn our eyea
in this high noon in this high noon
where the ancient wounds
burst into birdsong, flower
into the bridal tunes
irrevocably-seeking the Falconer and his gyre
where all had slept as the dew on the briar
forgetting Beauty, neglecting the heart's communion
mary angela douglas 17 june 2017;28 august 2022
ARCADIA,
THE WORD IS LIKE A CHERRY LOZENGE
Arcadia, the word is like a cherry lozenge on the tongue
or butter rum candies my sister proposed
looking up from the swing sitting idle
in the sunlight
peripatetic golden child of music.
and now we're seeking the names of clouds,
off on our pastel expeditions
on picnic grounds, our own backyard
did we bring the coconut cake?
and we are far from trouble in the blue isles
sprouting wings and laughing sporadically
in cumulo nimbus, cumulo stratus, cirrus
cirrus, circuses in green and the tightrope lady
in pink sequined skirts
and this is our just desserts
we say, scooping into the fudge sundaes
or playing in the sprinkler on
hot Arkansas days
when the roses boil and grandfather
concocts historic rootbeer floats
the old fashioned way
when we make a wish on the Milky Way
that summer lasts at least until Christmas.
we have his word for it, smiles Grandfather.
mary angela douglas 28 june 2016;26 august 2022;28 february 2023
Singer of Scottish ballads par excellence.
shadowing the pear trees in the fairy story
and here they leave you (all your songs)
ENTER PIERROT,
LAUGHING
dusk falls in
sepia tones
as it always does
in the vintage photographs
but pierrot is a
complex subject even so
is he laughing or
crying
will you ever
know the pinwheel effusions of his summer epochs
his heart that
sows white rosebuds
seen from the
distance you are sure his smile is real
on closer
inspection, what does he really feel
no daguerreotype
will ever reveal
is it the sun
after rain or the other way round
a hopscotch
falling to the ground
a lamentarion of
coloured chalks or in pastels
is he feeling
very well
he’s out for a
walk in infinity
with the beau
geste
and his silken
shoes on the moon’s crest
or a quaking wire…
what was it you
aspired to
a long time ago I
played La Polichinelle on the piano
no one would
believe it now
how I paint in
imagination, memory’s gallery
his mauve bright
tears
the small smile
of redacted years
his penny bright
forays…
perceptive angels,
do what you must
guard his
tremors, cherish his dust
I cannot find him.
mary angela
douglas 1 april 2021;2 april 2021;23 june 2022;24 august 2022
weaving the fabric made of clouds
and of the retreating armies-
I whisper to myself, again-
maybe it's not too late
for the new-spun colours in my head-
the cherry velvet ravels swept aside;
a silver tack of wondering again,
never setting sail-
who lost the Age of Rose?
I count the last gold
in the corners
and count again, sweet
polished cotton dresses with no seams:
the sprigged details
for the diffident day
on a simple field of honour.
not knowing the pearl of minutiae
as You do, oh God-
I'm turning this inside out to find You-
and twining the dreamy-treadled thread
that keeps on breaking yet still shines
in tiny roseate crystals stitched on snows.
piano music's sateen on the wind
and seems to disappear, pure lemon verbena.
but sparkles do not dwindle, lily-of-the-valley
mine
though I'm so small and slide off of the bench
never reaching the pedals by the chiffoniere
where it's always almost spring;
you won't disturb
the shawl of dappled roses on the doll crib-
the childhood fortitude so pear wept
twig by twig, the same;
remember me, and, if not-
the pale green earrings-
my geranium gown...
I turn the diamond spackled key
of an antique conversation:
who lost the pockets of the
children filled, the little sashes made of
white violet velvet
isles?
mary angela douglas 6-8 november 2011
on this dreaming, forgetful earth
let telegrams go out
from the missing
in words formed from mist
to say only this
I have not forgotten
I am not forgotten
let the lakes widen on other planets
becoming more luminous and blue
wave on wave without rue
rippled from the stone
of far away wishing
I have not forgotten
I am not forgotten
let the children suddenly stop crying
for a pair of wings
sung to sleep by the silver birds
the birds of dream
in their returning
and under a moon of cream
spilt on the floors of the Unseen
and the Beautiful, still.
that has not forgotten
that is not forgotten.
mary angela douglas 22 august 2022;28 february 2023
we ahould be sailing on the good night ship again
all sails billowing in an opalescent wind
the moon winks gold the stars show jubilee
snow drifts like petals upon an emerald sea
softly, softly
who knows but that the last lullaby may shadow the first
except we won't be rowing back to earth
by sunrise, sunrise
we could do worse than imagine it so
that the last sleep is a flower sleep
in errant lovely april hushed
and the heart is brimming
with the late snows, the late snows
that we will miss so much
then we will Christmas croon Jesu, it's you we adore
and hear our mamas calling us
to moire, pearl bright shores.
mary angela douglas 18 august 2022;1 march 2023
[for the poet John Keats]
“ whose name was writ in water”
for Immortal, Timeless Poetry…and the children-
for whom it was all and will be, inscribed again,
and not forgotten…
“The very music of the name has gone…”
John Keats, Endymion
=========================================
another crystal ship is going down
there where the violet waters cannot reach the sun
or where, the bargained-over heart
is run aground
no longer feeling anything at all
for the Attic messengers berated and
berated and
thrown overboard
in waters that won’t register the sound
of this bleak sowing.
the moon on bartered waters gives no light.
dim are the trees that used to
green the shore.
jingoistic captains seize the day:
cueing the numb musicians on the deck
for one last, auctioned song
to bear doomed passengers along
cold, flooded passageways.
we’re losing time and memory every day
observing the Grail float by us on the tides
and willing it all away to starfish
while we just hang on in the frozen waters
to the driftwood bracing prayers
we must remember…
“Our Father…
another crystal ship is going down-
another and another – everywhere -
alive with diamond words…
that must be spared
though we’re - just – ballast - to them:
the odd Ringmasters crowing
at the glint of Beauty drowned
and going down
they’ll claim -but it’s not true-
in Ophelia-coloured waters=
Not - this - time.
for we have heard-
though half-awake
the mist-bright mermaids surging Home
and we may see, half-blinded through our tears-
that when curbed lovely words
disintegrate – they cry out in soft rains:
“Hallowed be thy Name”…
however long we wait, we wait
at the edge of these coiled waters-
clear on their Return on the evening's tide.
pearl were the hulls
now singing on their way, so “optional”.
sheer Pearl, bewept, the tears of God
who only sent them all
(“Deliver Us From Evil…”)
to save our children
in the glacial days ahead…
treading the implacable waters…
mary angela douglas 18-20 april 2012
[for William Butler Yeats, with reverence]
(and for Martin Burke, Irish-Belgian poet and
playwright, in memorium)
all his infinite labouring at bright
coincidence
has long ago spun into the gold
of finer worlds than this one.
do you still read him
as the rose tinged glass,
the harp glossed marvel gone?
I wonder and then wonder endlessly
that poets after him
dared to keep on writing.
who will burn the sun into legend now;
the moon, this starlit haunted maze, into a
jewelry
closer at hand too dear to us
or scan the snows of
ancient mourning
or note-
oh sons and daughters,
the floating counterpoint of the swans
on Ireland's stilled, strange waters.
I have bound these letters with a shaking hand
couching my lament in flowers
from the antique gardens,
the rose ridden hours;
learning in this, my latter age and stirred
beyond praise,
all minstrel lays and sheared minstrelsy
itself-
tremulous, and grave to the very grave
to say to you, only: that poems like his-
we have not earned.
mary angela douglas 14 august 2015
