A GOLDEN AGE AGO WE READ

 

A GOLDEN AGE AGO WE READ

A golden age ago we read

For the pure joy of reading, breathing

The beautiful books, what we dared to call

The classics, the masterpieces

Unscathed by critics, unlectured to as to

Colonialism 

In love with the worlds so reimagined

By the Brontes, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust

Henry James, dare I say oh yes I do

The illimitable storytellers Isak Dinesen, Ray Bradbury

O Henry, and the Alicean texts of childhood

drinking in the blackberries drenched with cream

for the good little bunnies in Beatrix Potter's fables

exploring the paradiso by nostalgic for Heaven dear Dante

the visionary Blake of pastorals and blighting and redemption

The orchards of Ms. Alcott where we reveled and wept

And grew sentimental and were not ashamed

of the old fashioned virtues of God as the pattern

and Christ as the Way

and ate apples in the garret along with Jo

scribbling away

Taciturn Melville of the wild eyed seas, Hawthorne laden

With his ghosts, Emerson with his jeweled essays, Mark Twain

Sounding the rivers depths, Washington Irving haunting in

Such a memorable way Old Christmas and the Alhambra

curator of

the Hudson valley ghosts, and all all the storybooks

we imbibed! would constitute our countryside, our country

Kingdom most like a dream yet vivid

And O! and Lo! The many storied largesse of Shakespeare…

The fairytales in full were our terrain. The Romantic Keats

And skybourne Shelley, Rilke drenched in distant starlight

As the Immortal Poets still existed and we

More than existed in their unparalleled realms

A golden age ago I read the trilling mockingbird excess

Of Conrad Aiken and danced with the Holy Ghost in Hopkins

Oh resplendent resplendent

Now in secret those of us who are truly cogniscenti

Hoard our gold in the same way

Buttress the castles of our extravagant imaginations

And apologize to no one.

mary angela douglas 11 april 2024