I SAW THE GHOST OF WALTER DE LA MARE (FINAL VERSION)

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY 150 YEARS WALTER DE LA MARE:

April 25, 2023

I saw the ghost of Walter de la mare

leaning, on an April curve of music,

unaware

I saw his hands of tender glass

and the thin china he was drinking from,

reflective, the dark raspberry still waters

of beauty he drew up in pailfuls-

the silver pooling stars

at his beck and call-

the curio cabinets bedizened,

strongholds of childhood jams

and the apricot laughter of the cherubim,

by his side.

now acorn cups half brim from twilight rain

the fairy feast’s abandoned, he complained

“Is there anybody there”?

he said, answering his own soul alone

“the whispering trees of Eden”,

he wept.

they pour the ocean into a thimble

our golden ships may founder in the Moss,

there are other losses,

song is made desolate, Walter de la mare

long years since your flag was

lowered to the ground,

marring with pearl

mere semblances of Music

everafter.

rust from the muted region’s flaking.

your antique tears I brushed away,

no one’s watercolor, for so long.

mary angela douglas 20-21 december 2009; 27 july 2022;25 april 2023

PLEASE NOTE: THE TWO LINES IN QUOTES ARE DE LA MARE'S OWN WORDS IN TWO OF HIS POEMS: The Listeners, and Goodbye. I do think his poem Goodbye, outside of the King James Bible,and the enitire works of Shakespeare,is the most beautiful poem in the English language

This poem is also based on an anecdote in the book Deathbed Visions, where a friend of his not that many days before his death was conversing with WDLM in front of a china shop window they were halfway looking at while conversing and he said that while gesturing animatedly all of a sudden he SAW THROUGH WDLM's hand as though it were transparent to the china in the window display. So I used this in the poem as well.