LEVERAGED TO NEVER SAY THE ROSENAMES AGAIN

sometimes I feel in reading old poetry

I marvel that language could become

flowers falling from the trees of once upon

heaped up before us on the sidewalks

or translated into chimes

the nightingale's persistence through Time

melodious

in a tidebourne wonderment

colours in breathtaking subtleties

music that when played again

finds no present glorified magnified echo

than what we whisper inside

because beauty now like some badly bartered bride

had been utterly revised, disguised

traded in for utility and self acclaim.

for the new new wave

that drowns us with the mermaids;

for the minimal, for the diminished  Rose to rose

or who knows. leveraged to never say the rosenames again

or be laughed off the stage by insipid rage

for Poetry turned into prose has become the game

drawing a bead on the headlines

leaving all harps behind

to weep alone and bear their harmonic sympathies

to be

rife with disgraced lyricism and the sentimental

tone on tone irreplaceable. yet here we are

our wandering stars wandering farther away because

beauty loved for its own sake tramples now

they say the forward thinking buzzards

on the social laws, cold justice.

so I play the old scores

on my fretted Soul

knowing this alone is merciful

I murmur them upon departing winds

and feel such a yearning toward then

when poetry was holy and ever like a Grail

I think of the dear names of those who lived and failed for it

and I see in what was written flame on flame

a language forever elegiac

and stunning in its affect

embroidered with the sun

the solicitude of evenings

where the Soul could breathe

where God was not deserted by

some alien decree

and each poem rose and set

on its own impeccable axis

brimful with Grace we could not forget

now we the throwback vagrants

observe observe

the derelict ruins 

the tit for tat

the incessant blowback

has damaged the fleeced skies

we once named the Heavens

now language from some bewildering ditch

like an evil witch thrives

turning the swans

into merely an ecosystem's tribe.

what hell we have made of that Eden

dulling even the bread and butter days

where the butter shone like gold

mary angela douglas 4 december 2022;6 february 2023