To Wim Wenders On His Angelic Images

let the guardians fall from the skies

as tender as snow feathers the angels

looking after humankind

and find in the whisper of a prayer

in the blueberry picking dreams of the children

the key to beginning again

let the winds sway Edenward

in a pale green listening

and the child lost in snow

recover the light

relieved of snow blindness

and half dream of those who study as if it were a vow

confined to libraries and to a distant quest

take another breath

those about to jump from bridges

take a step back

or fall into the arms of the angels reduced to

human perplexity and fresh coffee

counting the rays of the sun in base two

in primary colours in secret distress, delight

radioing in the beauty and fragility

the tragedy the infinite redemption

of those still on earth.

mary angela douglas 9 february 2021

The Brocades Spilling Out From Your Bazaars O Lord

[for the Irish-Belgian poet, Martin Burke

and to all the poets of Persia and Istanbul of fabled beauty remembered

to the poetry of Armenia as treasured by the poet Osip Mandelstam-

and to anyone's child peering into the rainwater puddle and thinking: there is another country there, made of the mirrored trees and clouds, of...

the brocades spilling out from your Bazaars o Lord

delight the heart

and we will drink coffee from golden thimbles

cried your children in disguise, like

the grown-ups, arguing the finer points 

of Andromeda or the price of bread;

or is the candy sweet enough as

little, native oranges?

and will the sesame-sprung door swing wide enough then

so that we may become

my Lord's own jewelry, forever

where we could in long content just be

mere sparkles, prismed, reveries:

of your spiraling rainbows, Lord.

or are the children made of

rosewater and halvah

and everything that was said

between starlight and starlight.

well, it must be poetry

spilling out from your Bazaar

as turquoise, ribboning, shimmering as

patterns of birdsong

can ever be

or exotic roses, spun

on a single rubied thread

said the weavers dreaming

secretly of whole countries, coteries,

languages missing the words for tears;

the phrase for,

forever leaving home

mary angela douglas 16  november 2013

Note on the Poem: Andromeda in the poem is a reference to the galaxy Andromeda and its contradictions and mysteries from the point of view of astronomy and from its high visibility on moonless nights emotionally representing to me at least: one view of Poetry- it is not being used at all as an allusion to the Greek myth of Andromeda etc. which I find, at best, distressing.

THE ROSE BOOKS OF ANATOLY KONENKO

THE ROSE BOOKS OF ANATOLY KONENKO

[to the artist Anatoly Konenko and his rose books]*

waiting for the beautiful ship to come

we stood on sinking continents

our eyes flooded with meteor showers

in a compact room

an artist sat

making books out of dried

rosepetals

children in their sleep

waiting for the beautiful ship to come

might never know

the roseleaves he was turning

at precisely the midnight

of the world

bird shadows over the blue

green melting poles could understand;

sensing the end of all auroras

they sang only for him

the artist arranging rose pages

binding with flowers the ...

with fine mauve stitching that

would not come undone

rose inscriptions

rose inscriptions

rose inscriptions

was all that God could read

mary angela douglas 13 june 2009

*a contemporary Russian artist from Omsk who makes tiny books out of dried rosepetals and other things in amazing miniture. He made a book for his wife out of rosepetals inscribed with Pushkin's poems about roses.