The Transforming Word Is Music

(to my mother in honor of the day she went to Heaven)

to say for once, the transforming word

to turn the carriage into pink confection

the dress into bright horses

that's not how it went

perhaps we said when mama changed the stories

from her garden chair

turning the signet ring three times...

and then you are suddenly knee deep in spring

and the azaleas and you are the azalea queen

alright then, if it's a new story...

we will attend till when we breathe

a transfiguring sigh

and then will we comprehend

how every word she spoke

was a garden

and we were the tillers.

mary angela douglas 11 march 2021

She Remembers The Predominance Of Music, The Dominant Chords

could it be that we were that small

to view the ascension of angels

through our vue finders

to make of the green leaves a permanent castle

to blow soap bubbles into the sun 

were we that young

to know that we could spend our dimes

on any far flung enterprise

being taken to the school book fairs

and wander happy there for all our lives

or to the circus the popcorn dreaming matiness

or listening to Mozart in our blue room

on our little records, or Beethoven

we heard it with our ABCS

the sunken cathedral of Debussy

or when sudden storms blew up

in the garden: mysterious Music

Or Grandmother's Liszt in the piano studio

where she played like fountains weeping on

the mystical keys

with Grandfather at his ease in the brown recliner

listening listening 

Lord help me remember these, our scenes

my sister and I

our lines

all our lost valentines to You

and to our Mama

the play is long

with few intermissions

except, for the rose scent, evergreen glint 

of Song.

aamary angela douglas 28 february 2021 

Yellow Organza

the toy on the table left behind

is that Time? the children asked

looking down at their blue shoes

invited in toward the end of the Party

when the grownups came

to take them off to sleep

to sleep in a drift of rose petals sweet

so that their mamas could not tell you

which is the flower and which is the child

I'll see you in a while I said to the shaft of moonlight

as I woke up in the present tense

thinking it was their ghosts 

I had just come from seeing

we were all back home

everyone there

even the old bears

the ones that came with their primrose ribbons

ages ago

when we thought they guarded the world

and sometimes the sun is pink on the wall

and we are told the story of the good little rabbits

who had blackberries for supper with cream

but I wept for Peter secretly

who had been in Mr. McGregor's garden

and was punished with no blackberries for dinner at all

and banished from the table.

if only banishment were only in stories

if I could look through the blinds and be

five years old again

and me and my sister in the room with the toy piano

we're dressed in yellow organza

like almost apricot twins

and it's the dawn of music

all over again.

mary angela douglas 12 february 2021

The Way Things Should Be

the leaf and the shadow of the leaf in agreement

the white birches made more silver in moonlight

the snow more dazzling at dawn

the violets I came upon in a dream prolonged

the footprints smoothed over so that there is only snow

there is only purity of intent in the petals falling over the earth

and the Rood of jeweled light rising

and the swan of music endlessly in flight

the story with its happy ending

the Rose that Eternity invents

and  the lullaby

where we drift on a green seam in a wooden boat

and only know in the waves lapping against the boat

that just keeps floating on

that God is love is love is love.

mary angela douglas 29 january 2021

When You Remember

there are dreamlike moments when the unthinkable happens

time is paused and the glass slipper slips from her hands

who could guess prisms could compound such a shattering so

that there seems to be no blue bird near at hand.

you remember the summer marigold or was it the moon

turned marigold and we sipped apricot nectar, chilled.

practicing all afternoons the piano scales.

time is not paused except in the music, when you play it over

when you reconsider the sound was everywhere.

it fell softly like

snow, composing you.

mary angela douglas 8 january 2020

I Opened The Book Of Dreams And It Was Empty

I opened the book of dreams and it was empty

as if great snows had taken it away

and did you hold in your hands bouquets of

snows and snows

and was all that vanishing

meant for you.

I gaze and gaze

but nothing speaks: they go their ways,

the muted and the sure.

yet starlight was pure

though who of them could say 

of their own provenance ah,

was the book of days inlaid in
dark blue and gold?

I know that this was

though curio cabinet-stashed
oh I really was. and

though these floods remain
above the capsized,
tree-lined,violet aubades

drowned in it all:
old Christmas train-yard,
 valentine-pale, my scissored heart!

still
coveting the singing wave-

turn back, turn back
with Maytimes petaling anew 

to crown you with music

 far from the fictive town.
sheer language never drowned there.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2015;rev.8, 11 march 2015

I Pray For The Angels At The Ruined Gate

I pray for the angels at the ruined gate.

the silent angels. the ones with sheathed swords.

the ones who have turned aside from weeping

it says in the music when you turn the page.

can you turn the page for the ruined angels

at the silent gate that cannot open now.

it cannot open because it is ruined.

we sing in the rubble.

mary angela douglas 28 february 2015

The Nocturne Played As A Child

the cut velvet draping of the evening

the sequined sky

the elegance of God the sprigged trees

is it always april in her mind
on a terrace as quiet
as one jeweled cloud?

she plays the nocturnes simply

on the piano of green breezes

and wears a nosegay of pale pink

and only dresses in rose.

all this was at the beginning of music

the nocturne played as a child

the spinning out of the frosted ballets

in wide skirts like flowers

and this is ours

until the last note fades into the green green

darkness that He made

and where we want to live

mary angela douglas 21 february 2015 

The Music Of Swans

[to Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam...]

(and for my Grandmother, Lucy White Young)

once we knew the music of swans,

the silver scrolled.

standing on tiptoe

you see the rose windows;

you can almost reach them.

you love a gardenia stillness;

it is not distilled.

perfume of ivory.

perfume of the palest green.

once we saw through the orchards

in all the paintings:

did they come to life?

we breathed our words

falling to earth all apple blossom.

or inscribed on the winter air, in crystal.

and in the citrus summers, in-between,

we learned the music of swans

so that afterwards, in the long ages,

someone would not forget them.

mary angela douglas 3 february 2015

Oh Ghosts Of My Music, When Will We Depart

oh ghosts of my music

when will we depart

I will not leave without you.

here on the old rolls the census of your notes

has been taken. they will not hold you.

the composers in plaster of paris mold

the days into a kind of snow in my Grandmother's studio.

and everything is made vast.

oh may bright feelings last

perhaps you prayed

over the etudes your contemporaries

cast aside.

weeping into these transcriptions

as if they were your griefs, made .manifest.

and I have heard your violins, your pianos

the flowering glissandos and the harp's

descrescendo in order to outlast these deserts

under your invisible palms.

mirage-like you are not.

more solid than their schemes

who live to banish you.

as if they could

who breathed Heaven into our exile

as if you were a Heart

and chartered the countries where we

joy, apart.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

Sonatina In Rose

to live in a house with rose patterned wall papers

overlooking a rose garden

and when it snows, the roses merely sparkle

not forgetting to bloom.

to drift from rose room to room

as if you were fine perfume.

the venetian blinds are pink.

the tablecloths pale green.

you play the piano and then it seems

that music blooms and remembers your name.

how when the rose gold of familiar clouds shifts

over the trees

will you explain to the neighbors

to the angels at their ease

the tint of your windows.

or how will you even care

who live, a rose, among roses

anywhere you dream this.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015

I Saw The Amazing Skies With Their Very Own Watercolours

I saw the amazing skies with their very own water colours

shine and I felt the shine inside of them the pearl decked clouds

the feeling of music in me

drift, do not drift away I yearned but could not say.

and this was childhood.

they do not teach us this and think we are little because we are

amazed at the

skies and pearled within; they think of us as shells

and require of us school.

and yet without being taught we loved beauty, the high winds;

the little breezes in the rose garden.

and felt we could say things to the stars.

mary angela douglas 25 january 2015

Winged Music Starts Awake In A Clouded Chamber

winged music starts awake in a clouded chamber

at the turning of the rose stair in a dream

we came to life or wished we could and

soared over woods like the clouds we were

when we were small

and all the skies seemed chalk pink

scrawled on His translucent blues

and you wore your new patent shoes

and it wasn't even Sunday!

winged music stayed at home and hid

beneath the polished piano lid

you polished yourself on Saturdays

and then went out to play.

and whether the leaves were falling down

like London bridge without a sound

and whether the sheen of snowfall on the way

caught at your heart 100 x a day

it could never be enough

the music played.

mary angela douglas 13 january 2015

Northern Lights

[to Rainer Maria Rilke and his angels]

this- glazing of angels

melting of Chartres.

this- herd of winged colours:

lightenings of mint and rose.

edged in deep lemon, inside of  a Shell?

a shell of blazing quiet assailed by shimmering.

and if it has a name, whose is it?

who are you etching in icy skies

these violet banded flights

outside the frightened houses

drawing back, as if they could, and chalked in white

as if to mark the place excessive Beauty ranged:  

raveling and strange:

the Distant Heart's glissandos,
ringed with snow

mary angela douglas 25 december 2014;last two lines added
 26 december 2014

Cliburn In Moscow

["is there anyone

who can peer into your  eyes

and with his own blood fuse

two centuries worth of vertebrae?"

-Osip Mandelstam, The Age]

Cliburn in Moscow

holding in his arms

the flame-tipped roses of the bygone,

a last music box from the tattered silk

families, inscribed with only song-

like a favored child

overloaded at Christmas-

could not contain enough music

to express this miracle:

amethyst sunbursts beading the river

music, ruling the world...

how could he leave (he never could)

raspberry, the light in the skies and the

weeping coronas of a music

exquisitely tuned, returned through him

to them, in the jeweled air

by an orphaned moment looping in on itself 

from the long-ago: whole etudes of the

half-forgotten summers rippling the ponds

willow stirred; fire-branded, the white piano

evenings, on our hearts, then the ghosts of music

whispered,  now...

and was it engraved on the pale blue snows

of the soul's long fortitude, all along, their delicate

farewell in you repeated, going back to

the first measure?

once domes of pure silver glinted a silver music unbound,

unprecedented, fusing the brokenness

and continents merged as though there were no ocean

but the ocean of music, sparkling, flashing diamond myriad

mystical, pressed to the heart but the heart is... fleeting

and cannot be embroidered on your pillow, child

not even in vermilion, tamarind, glistening, blue

snows will not erase, nor all of time,

the burnished image from the mind the sounds

dropped from Heaven by the astonished angels

uncareful of their prize

mary angela douglas 12 june 2014;rev. 14 june 2014

Note on the poem: The first stanza of the poem refers to scenes of Cliburn being loaded down with family heirlooms and souvenirs by kind Russian concert goers deeply affected by his music. This happened to him, I believe, each time he returned to Russia.

You may think I dropped a note or two to call the gold domes of Moscow silver. Or is it Petersburg? Or was it a deliberate misreading to indicate a psychological state when the inner light is so blinding that physical details of the outward scene, no matter how beautiful cannot register properly or is it that the domes of silver rising from the music of Van Cliburn's concerts, were silver? the very silver of the poets of the Silver Age...

"Uncareful" (in the final line), also, is not a real word in English but I often use the prefix  "un"(meaning, not) in front of a word if this causes the sounds to flow together more beautifully (so I coined "uncareful" instead of using the usual "careless".

Where Is the Beautiful Where You Were is an elegy I wrote after Van Cliburn died.  And this shorter poem, though written so much later is kind of a broken off icicle from the eaves of, the opus of that larger sorrow, if this makes sense to you I would be amazed.

Green Mercies Poured Out In A Waking Dream

[on the canonization of St. John Paul II and St. John XXIII]

green mercies poured out in a waking dream

and this is earth, we cried! and may we

drink the chalice of His skies swirling with

stars and colours.

green mercies poured out in a living stream

and I have gathered violet on violet in this late spring

the dark purpureal and the pale lavender and still

I cannot dream enough. 

and the skies are flecked with doves and the

doves with rainbows and all my prismed sighs

have broken into music.

green mercies flowed into

the sea of all colours the ruffling waves above

the precipice of hope.

and the white bells rang white music, snows

of mercies in a sky of dreams with the imprint of leaves

and ferns in shaded places

where there is no more weariness.

mary angela douglas 27 april 2014