in the old faery tales in the best
translations with the rose and the lily
the phoenix embossed covers
with the woodcuts or something by Rackham
who turned any lock to that elusive kingdom
inside out
so easily as if he made the master key from
the winds invisible or from the Dream
formidable
Dore to Dante, so elegantly tempestuously
portrayed or for Cervantes the ways through
the tangled woods toward Infinite Light
the quests of Arthur laid to rest
the disenchanted Knight and his squire
the early or late interventions disabling
the Dreamers
well, in those stories now you will find
a something refined and inexplicably edited
out, sifted out gold to our detriment
of the modern versions as if the moon
were clipped from the skies, the clouds
turned silvery, the Rose from the dessicated
Heart removed, the emeralds from Oz
the songs full of dead larks
that is the warning elliptical as it may seem
to the attentive and lucidly dreaming reader:
it's not the nightingale of artifice you want
the trees pruned back as though they were
never in blossom
when you are facing death or death in life
but the real one
yet
so men cried with Christ on the cross to
Pilate's slippery question
whom shall I release to you then:
oh no. not Him.
give us Barabbas.
or as Hans Andersen said
we have been made to drink sand
from a teacup, and call it good;
the texts have shriveled to a shred
of little consequence on earth.
mary angela douglas 6 september 2022;27 february 2023
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