The Vanishing Of Notebooks

[to Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam]

the vanishing of notebooks did he muse

upon the Muse; the muse is banished she

sang, dark cherry tinged songs, Nadezhda, let us write our names on

snow perhaps he whispered 

whispered then he was gone.

as the crow flies say all the proverbs

so the saints die he said or the poets

so near the Hagia Sophia
and the crows reign sadly 

but we, did we write our names on snow

I carried you she cried how could they really

quench the lamp we could not see 

was burning down and

I awoke from dreams of even more trouble

and to 

the vanishing of notebooks

but Time could not eat your face in my dreams where

it was May

it was beautiful May

all the trees were snowing our names

mary angela douglas 15 february 2015

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

Mandelstam's Ghost Returns Too Early

[to Osip Mandelstam]

someone has turned the moon's wick down

so that I no longer see where the

vague wolves gather.

there's tar on the breeze

a perfume from Space

but I'm not the same one

I can't keep it straight

why Song is still caught in

my windy throat

and your smile is ravishing yet snows

on these familiar scenes

the moon's turned up, the earth

less featureless now

is this where we escaped the moat

dripping like trees in the green of summer

by winter canals?

mary angela douglas 16 june 2014

Note on the poem:Whether or not Akhmatova hears him I do not know. Whether or not she is still on earth herself I do not know but I think this is true.  That is the meaning, one of them, of his "returning too early".

I imagine her in one version writing at her desk a few years after he has died.  But like the notebook variations of , Dostoyevsky, the many pathed woods of possibility, some or all of these versions are true in the labyrinth of Time as long as you do not forget: these poets were on the earth and left their words for you to find...

P.S. the happiest secret of this poem that I am telling only you is that Mandelstam, although confused in the poem does not remember his pain on earth.  That is one reason the wolves are vague to him or the wolves are vague because Russia has altered in that way.  And Mandelstam has forgotten almost all of his pain on earth, at least, the details as well as Akhmatova's pain, Nadezhda's pain, the pain of all Russia.  He remembers escaping although, in the end, he did not.  At least, on this side of the equation.

The escape from the moat, a fairytale image.  He must have longed to escape so much in reality.  But some vestige of pain or the memory of pain remains which is why, there is the image of the summer trees after soft rains by winter canals.

He has not yet forgotten everything.