PARTICOLOURED TEARS WERE FALLING THROUGH THE EVENING, BLIND (FINAL VERSION)

 

PARTICOLOURED TEARS WERE FALLING THROUGH THE EVENING BLIND

for Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920=June 5, 2012)

this small elegy on the pianoforte

oh all the rainbows have fallen into the earth, headfirst-

and "snow without Christmas" as he cried
has stunned his sometimed midnight's
sunned chorales.

but - even now-
when the first curled handbell of grief is chimed, at times, magnolia creamery of the long before,
you're still in business

on the ivory keys of snowconed pages turning
in the lock
or filtering round pure
apricot sparkles down
oh God knows how-
my April shuttered mind.
it's wondering I dream to find
no new poet laureate of the homesick, but
distraught cloud horses whinnying on their own in
folds of cerulean, coral, forestalled-
with storied apples offered: oh wrought of a banished gold-
(as they are now) -
to keep them home.

the day wears on…we won't know clearly now
when dark ferrised earth kept turning into...
blossom ladened trees renew their snow and
petal the sweetheart mourning: "morning
minstrelsy is dead" throughout the vacant orchards but is she
pale pink surprised into carmine-
by valentines received
in the afternoon mail
from one thought dead…?

while we as we behold through a looking glass pinhole in the constellations:
his ice-cream coloured trollies
hauling back and forth
new circuses of sighs and working prisms-
("dewdrop, listen"…he whispered so we wouldn't forget you ever-
or children would justlet go and all at the same time
their last balloons losing everything then
it felt that way, to them…)

It's got to be now on Opal Rails
somewhere else, going on…
couch this in bluebirds and hydrangeas…
and cool cups of lilied moonlight on the grass
of other planets looking just like home

held higher above our heads than these dreams
have ever been before: long
past the vast pinwheeled parades of the strolling musicians, musicless

on earth,

but not where motley is torn-
its falling its falling through the evening blind
and near
our particoloured tears, unending…
for the something unsurpassed
and all, all-in-all at last…
caught by a weeping God in a ruby red bottle-
the best firefly of the whole Summer…

mary angela douglas 14 june 2012 1: 49 p.m.