Hope Is The Best Poem Of All

[to the cyber-bullies, trolls, who waylaid my poem (Tundra, Perhaps The Silver Forests...) on the blogsite Scarriet Actualy I never posted this poem (in comments) on the poetry blog Scarriet. The person or persons went to this blog (TO THE RUSSIAN POETS) and selected the first four lines for intense ridicule before I had even dedicated it to Osip Mandelstam. But then, Osip Mandelstam was bullied to death.]

"Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him..."
from Psalm 42:11

hope is the best poem of all

I said to the lowering clouds

to the cruelty of random strangers

tearing the fleece of my poem
behind their halloween masks.

never mind it will mend:

the gold, the rubied thread

of the word in kindness said
for Beauty's sake:

oh snare it all apart and snag! it still

will show in the flowering moonlight

as God planned; in the vast snows

of His Hand.

hope is the best poem of all

you charlatans sounding the moonlight

from the shallows of world-wide Poetry
not on trial here!

the conversations of angels

mary angela douglas 15 december 2014

ASLAN* OR THE BRIGANDS GO THE OTHER WAY

ASLAN OR THE BRIGANDS GO THE OTHER WAY

[to Jesus the Christ, the Lion of Judah (the overcoming one...)]

the brigands go the other way;

calumny stares stone-statue dead

at the white-frost crossroads

in my head

suddenly everything

turned to song.

white flowers staunched

the senseless wounds

where late and long my soul had bled

and I cannot relate to you

how suddenly the winter fled.

everything suddenly turned to song

the hand upraised struck down

at last

and evil's anvil hatched and passed

flowed by You into

silver stars.

I wept at Your bright armies;

and I could only bow my head

when-

wolfish sorrows stalked away

and shadow-puppet Scorn

knew Dread.

suddenly everything turned to song

like a forever Eastertide

and we were finally by Your side

and couldn't be overthrown-

mary angela douglas 7 february 2010

*After C,S, Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia

VAN GOGH TO HIS BROTHER, UNDATED LETTER, SUMMER, 1891

VAN GOGH TO HIS BROTHER, UNDATED LETTER, SUMMER 1891

[to my brother, Alan Leslie Douglas, in memorium)

the yellow leaves were falling

I could not catch them with my hands

the yellow stars and the pastel haloes

round them, ringing like colored glass

and every shade, a sound:

I was painting them mid-flight-

rosettes, like medals pinned against

the night, my

Legion of Honor-

you know, we always knew the

time of orchards was so brief, remember?

the pink and the mauve - the

apricot light - the moment's lightening.

I have a new studio; the walls are iris,

touched with snow.

I'm painting in colors we never

dreamed existed - without haste.

Dear Theo.

nothing is wasted.

mary angela douglas 23 april 2009

Note on the poem: I do know that Van Gogh died in 1890. I wrote this poem imagining what might have happened if he had lived for another year as it often happens in life that unexpected good happens after tremendous difficulty. 

Or the poem can be understood as a message to Theo from Van Gogh in the afterlife where he understands his art completely and is allowed to continue in it.