Thursday, March 30, 2023

NEITHER LEAF OR BLOOM HAVE THEY LEFT (FINAL VERSION)

 

(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 sparrows 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
Mary Angela Douglas

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