OPUS

For Ilya and Emilia Kabakov

there where icicles break off the stars

in the winter palaces of all my days

I will forever praise

those who find glory in the dust of days

and raise the beams of the house forsaken,

of holy art above the labyrinthian ways

that crush

the coroded majesties

the ache of the machinery of the heart breaking down

who do not bow down

to the dark drone of days enforced beyond

human endurance

manufactured for the populace

by those without grace

as though it were to be expected

but find inexplicably

all the banished radiances of God

who only extract the honey from the dirge

who see forever May

from the dingiest rooftops and fly

and draw from the dry wells

the quenching water of dreams

though they feel perhaps themselves to be

the last  redeemed

who fight for every gleam of

gold in the rubble

infinity in the icarian suns

mary angela douglas 1 june 2023