SPEAKING ENGLISH (FINAL VERSION WITH FINAL LINE BREAKS)

(to the very green memory of the English Romantic Poets)

courting the fair lost wonder of the skies

the ghosts of English poets stood out in the rain

wondering what happened to the world edged all around in gold;

edged all around in gold, who bartered what for what and keyed it all down

so softly, by degrees in the pearl smudged day we hardly noticed when

the Word left glistening, alone as though it had never been spoken into green.

let the faery ferns bend down their fronds through these wrecked dells,

now out-of-the-way and the musk roses sigh in the Borderlands that

even light dwindles, dividing itself into itself and praising nothing.

O eglantine! O mild musk roses blowing… 

brief Tyrian clouds above the foaming cliffs were mine,

but they swept by my childhood's aching that denied-not real enough,

was said. leaving me nothing more to say at school but to hobble on,

ever-after with the clipped birds from my hocked fairytales

their scissors sawed part-through; I'll never be real without them- 

who wants to be baked inside a very tasty gingerbread by the witchy experts

stealing the names that color the soul- this has always been

oh my little, little child. pretending to grow wiser you'll escape even farther

into the woods of gold and silver embossing-

 pure silence gathers stars.

and treasured there you're a better country without bitterness…

this is the part of the story where you disappear,

like a pearl in the pearl of mist or cloud

still owned by God and safe from lies. It shall be so. 

till the day you can come back with all the light-rescinded years,

the hollowed out, hallowed rinds of suns and snows, the wayward sparrows glinting

in the shadows not in vogue Oh God what's singing for

or speaking-

if it isn't this: to brand on the wasted heart incessant amazement- 

to be leased by God. 

you'll wake to wonder, too, so all- at-once to see

each drowsing castle in familiar mists of rose: 

the small house in the clearing brimmed with Christmas lights,

the bright fields sown

of the full-throated music you did not disown=

mary angela douglas 11-12 december 2011