Where Is The Beautiful Kingdom Where You Were

[to Van Cliburn at the piano playing “intuitively”  (July 12, 1934-February 27, 2013)]

where is the beautiful kingdom where you were

whenever you played music; its Niagras, at first. misted, far away?

the secret listener knew, surprised by an inner chromatic marveling

intensified from unseen castle to castle as you

sorted out the battlements

or were welling up from so many underground streams all at once-

iridescent in the night’s own studio with the windows flung wide open…

scattering the sweet pea blossoming sounds ..

until we were as you, yourself, unwaveringly,

solely comprised of music as the Heavens are of stars

from then on…

this is the mystic’s parade and vanishing

the soul said softly to the Trinity, no longer mystified:

is this how we’ve been breathing underwater all this time

imagining we heard music asked the child

and lapsed into a fairytale silence,

the rest is happiness.

these were the heart’s requirements always when

wishing through the lens of another world

the one we’d missed, somehow, like a cherry bright bus

at the corner of the everyday

that just comes once going somewhere special

in the childhood of a Spring

that can’t be cherished twice  yet now we hear again

the hue of something glimpsed, glittering that flits away

at the corner of the eye or through the eye of sound

Rildia would say the clarity

that can’t stop pouring out with a

drifting loveliness that must not die

oh searing everyone.or  only you, who are always listening – listening…

for the taproot of music startled into daylight’s continents.

And glistening…

now you are going away

taking

all this light, grieving. piano, pianissimo, sown while

dreaming concert halls keep the glow of something

we have lost again like children in the long-ago

thinking it’s still in our pockets with the last lemon drop, small

petal of the honeysuckle;

too young to know that the ripples rippling out from the

genial smile, the cadenced voice the sunlit heights

will not return just because you asked them to.

or how much it can cost to unlock a world.

but where are the snipers at Beauty now?

what have they dreamed into leaves and flowers recently

who named your career short-lived, too little gleaned

too much too soon, too

unassuming in intellect as if it weren’t enough to

be glad for the music in you and to give it all away.

every time you played for anyone:

these  lustres of the

piano moon dropping no grace notes over Texas, filling the room

as if it were the universe.

and it was.

dumbfounded, they would have been then and crystal faceted, themselves

before they found the crooked mirror things to say out of envy

when you called the beautiful

kingdoms down delineated and delineated

and all around us, green or snowy fragrances

alive as L’Isle Joyeuse floated out to us on a breeze

in the lone colours of your piano only

or the rose of Rosina painting your music red

crisp garnet hummingbird rubied and rubied...

as you distilled the deepening shadows of your blue gold fissions

charming the ineffable

wreathing, joyously near at hand

beyond all vividness, kindness we knew to be possible in this world

until we understood, weeping violet,-

turreted:

it was there within our own hearing

the tomb of buried Music emptied

into the singing Empyrean.

mary angela douglas 13, 14, 15, 16 march 2013

Note on poem:  I loved listening to Van Cliburn very much as a child in the first and second grades and from then on when I first heard his recordings in my grandmother's piano studio.

Rildia in the poem as you may know was his mother (Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn) who taught him marvelously well from age 3 to 17 when he was under the guidance of Madame Rosina Levine who, according to the author, Howard Reich who wrote a beautiful biography of Van Cliburn,  (titled only Van Cliburn, Thomas Nelson Publishers. copyright 1993) saw in his music the color red.  (which I have slightly elaborated on to indicate the richness of her teaching him in the Russian style, the grand manner enhancing what he learned from Rildia Bee.

I recognize Van Cliburn meant and means much to people all over the world including his fellow Texans and the Russian people he always held in his heart by his own admission.

To me, he was the first great music I ever remember hearing (although I head Chopin and Debussy first rather than the Tchaikovsky and Rachmoninoff), therefore, the reference to the beautiful Debussy piece he played so well and which I listened to after he died with tears:

L'Isle Joyeuse.

Checking Out Of The Punch And Judy Show

[to Rod Serling

to the Russian people,  forever  the guardians of Poetry

to all the Americas in my heart

to the poets of all lands, seen and unseen…]

“since in a net I seek to catch the wind.”

-Sir Thomas Wyatt “Whoso List to Hunt”

“Never forget!...I love you all, from the bottom of my heart…

Forever!”

-Van Cliburn, September 8, 2012, Fort Worth, Texas

(and to my Mama, this small bouquet is rendered)

it’s all candy striped at first you think and carouseled;

you gladly give your hand

and laugh when the others laugh at the same scene

in the movie.

and love the wafting of the buttered popcorn;

sidewalks where petals strew the soda fountained stoop;. blue twilights-

and treading carefully because you still can’t see

your soft red leatherette shoes in the theatre  dark;

you’re waiting for night vision to set-in

gemstoned like Christmas.

but when the score’s your own they turn and stare

and you’re aware the line has suddenly turned surly

for the larkspur ticket torn in half  

is you in your own stories

thrashed candy striped oh not in jest                                             

and sotto voce off-camera, always,

spurned lark beating at a thousand windows

so that it can’t be proved in court or to main street

glitterati  who thought why, everything was fine in study hall

with the one book only and the music stand

stuck to her hands just the way we glued it on in accessories

or was she born yesterday

                                     

you know how she is

living on her own at the doll house museum

near the Carnegie

now that she’s the jester that can’t find the grey-eyed king

in the stereoscopic parlour pacing tinily.

but lingering with her pianoforte,

melting in colour in the final frame.

pure pink spun sugar, vanishing, where?

in a sweetheart neckline in this weather?

into the greenwood.

one could well wonder,  unwrapping the paper cone

only holding air now, a bunch of pale blue ribbons

brought far from the farther fair

oh dear, and promised it looks like

only to you in her last letters

on lavender paper.

oh vellum pressed flowers in a volume of Keats

or Akhmatova or Barrett-Browning in Moroccan leather

slight tissue of India ink.

pressed pleats  pressed out  forever in my poem.

dear pink linen words, keep wrinkling.

(and with eyelet embroideries).

or you’re on the other side of the house-front and it’s sprinkling.

put out in the rain, bad prescient cat, no cream and no gelato!

observe the directorial gleam

on the puppet face smushed in or is it  carry the day, dissolving

in the hose green town with its toy train circling back

from the water tower for you forever in your best black velvet

winking out with the Giant stars…

you’re at the interview within the hour without

another dress to your sunburnt name

sent home to the mannequin station

we’ve just a thimbleful of dream to sell you

but you know you were there

on your one semi-formal occasion out,

oh party-frock laden lament

in a pencil skirt from work that will have to do and a notebook

when the child dissolved in the magic spring

blows in again on your sound stage kitchenette

with her black cherry warning: “ it’s not what you think, remember?”

she washes the Haviland in the sink.

stir the double boiler cocoa double-quick  she says

I want a raspberry phosphate...

why didn’t you listen when the sun melted  on the canvas?

now there’s no Time, I wept for the flickering.

and the Cross lifts shakily from earth  as in the painting by Dali

on the necklace of this dizzy universe Christ,

what did they do to you I cried

in our lost episodes by the stained glass props-

the rhinestone summonses.                                                                               

but you’ll pack early by moonlight

this time, Titania,

ill met by sponsors everywhere

if only they could find you

and just as rich suns are creaming in your mind…

the cocoa boils over, scalding the milk

for the lilac ticket-holders massed outside

thick pure green shutters.

you’re in the wrong line for the aliens they shouted.

reality cried in opals.

when suddenly you were asked rose-red to dance:

wistful in voile by the cake and punch:

by whose list to hunt.

there’s the little girl with the fetched pink handled scissors

from the dressing table,

the gauze spooled bandages , ticked off-

the baby’s breath,. a tiny drop of tea-rose perfume…::

old marionette, with your cold strings beautifully bleeding

through the fabric of His maritimes she sighed lightly

here’s my corsage for you, a hallmark snip was whispered

and the rose rose tear of  it is shed to let you know:

oh, flee!  for the soul’s white night has come too late here

to the children in their dreaming; it’s Christ, in the

windfall of all our twilight endings

light years beyond the countries of

their rending of the storybook rich tick tock

of the fairytale lacquer through the evening skies…

for you, the clasped hands with the sweet peas

Cliburn’s  last Chopin

and my red-rimmed eyes

and all this misplaced  creaking in a jewel-box lock

of the  soul’s  strange, lovely lovely light.

God rest your pearl-drop music its swan-crested flight

sweet, sweet is the night air when we walk out

in a kingdom where they will not  hunt again…

mary angela douglas 26, 27, 28 february, 1 march 2013

Non Generic Valentine To Christ The Lord Making No Name For Himself

All Beauty Was A Doorway Into God

["Music, breathing of statues, perhaps..."

-Rainer Maria Rilke]

[to the memory of my sister and I playing swing-a-statue

in the dew bright grass.  Just before supper...

[for MBY and LWY, the "Grown-ups" in this Play]

all Beauty was a doorway into God:

the latch that chimed, the secret Spring in winter's hues

the hidden passageways we knew, the playhouse played

whose brick was laid so well where few could see

its lemon candied Sun above

when we came home from school; new jump rope rules;

the small room colored in, pale blue

the wind that sailed the cherry petals

sown and just as you were taking your first steps

in a sunshine ruffled gown near the Rose Garden

(and with a pink parasol, balancing.)

or watching a Grown-up pull the taffy of a smile from you

by winding up the pull-toy moon or

showing you the latest lady bug perched

dilly down down from a Grown-up's point of view

with its own cuticle moon rising or setting.

or on a slender thread of grass as dear

as the orange nasturtium we loved.

enchantment only grew and grew

when measuring the birthday shadow of a dream

that flickered when you blew the candles out

on the rose crowned cakes.  year on shining year

what was it whispered in your ear, oh, stay...

now they want Change:  too chic, too late

to find the doorway or the gate, the baby star

the thistledown sigh

and Poetry is run off in a ditch-

I don't know why

and the apricot cupolas singed

on every fairy tale page.

and those who talk among the stars

or feel they do, are half in love

with only Magnitude-
and miss, sheer Light

misreading the music as the end

of the One who made it shine in them

on all those peerless afternoons

mary angela douglas 7, 8, 10 february 2013 

Froggie

[first draft]*

I caught something golden at the world's bright end

thinking, surely I will be among friends

if I bring it to them.

For my pains

I was slammed against a wall-

but it was golden

mary angela douglas 8 february 2013

*a condensed milk imaginary primary source version of The Brother's Grimm, imaginary, The Frog Prince, or perhaps, the query letter, proposal to an unnamed publisher for the Froggie's memoir...alas, poor Froggie, thrown against a wall...transformed and then married to a princess with a very bad temper who judged books by their covers. I see the froggie /Prince as essentially, an incurable sentimental idealist, optimist. A promise is a promise he would tell his children which is exactly what the King, her father said.

Della Robbia And Other Things

to a dry fountain

small birds came to drink

when holes were punched in a daylight sky

and the blue of old plaster flew as if it were the wind.

and an eggshell quiet shattered in a dream

of the whispered sonnets

freezing through the trees

and I said only, I do not lie

to the dry fountain where the small birds came to drink

in the Park you may remember or not at all.

and a small twig breaks that was already broken

and nothing scurries through the last leaves on the ground

where small birds shiver near a glazed stream

or lodge in the holes punched in the sky

and sing through the end of the punches thrown

in delicate aqua or marine

where an eggshell quiet shattered in a dream

of the whispered sonnets freezing through the trees

and the ghost of Mary Stuart counting all her beads

and whispering

deliver my blue soul from the cracked marble of the world

mary angela douglas 31 january 2013

Tell Us A Little Bit About Yourself

a long way down the violet road

I tried to go.

it vanished in the shifting winds,

the snow.  Oh, God, are you still here?

I cried out in the cold

and on the frozen prairies,

all alone.

then flowery meadows arose.

arose.

I am a wild rose planted by His hand

in a language now foreign.

a long way down the violet road

I tried to go

with diamonds in my hands

to feed the diamond birds

of singing.

mary angela douglas 28 june 2013

Beyond All Tithing

giving You back the gold of the sun:

the honey-gold and the amber.

giving You back the white-gold

of the moon and rightfully,

the blue stars and the red.

giving you back the green

wind, her April sources

and the rose slip slipping into the Dreaming

all over again.

Oh how did it cost so little:

the clouded violet in the snows:

the tunes still turning my music-box soul.

it's You in the marigold darkness everywhere

I know I know I know

in the rushing gold of the words You gave us:

the honey-gold and the amber

and the white gold of the moon

mary angela douglas 27, 28 january 2013

The Last Republic In The Sun

[to Miro Zdrahal]

we all survive with just one scrap of sky,

the bluest one-

even with no boundaries left

to cross, when the storms come;

every soldier for himself, the histories go.

and come again.

we can survive with just one

scrap of sky, and the green light all around filtered through the trees and

through our tears and through long

aeons of His smile.

our God,

the only one:

the last Republic in the sun.

mary angela douglas 23 january 2013

A Harp Is Weeping At The Door

[to Christ the Lord, even so...]

a harp is weeping at the door:

I have found an inconsolable stillness here;

there were jewels

they didn't come back for

even though the moonlight read:

here you will find the harp at the door.

it will be weeping.

now the glissando of the things that did not happen

is struck is struck down

by angels sparing you the memory of what was never intended

spoken into the funnel of jeweled afternoon.

or maybe it is that you had merely dropped

in leaves the colour of rust

the fairytale instructions

on the way to the Castle

so that some have turned to magic in no refined mood

self-spelled in the spume of the proud clouds drifting over:

itinerant traces of a yearning music

far from the range of their hearing it, now.

oh think but not too long on those

oh those-

who labored hammering

into such a soundless arc

the jeweled manifest of His singing

mary angela douglas 13-22 january 2013

Fragment For Rilke Inlaid By Akhmatova And Dante

the last Christmas train has left the station.

beatitude is drifting with the sun.

all things have gathered flight

for the last poets rising

on a golden wind

now that frost has cut the 

moon out of the skies.

and the snow in the heart keeps sifting down

keeps sifting down

all along the kleig-white evenings

where you whispered to yourself

and the First Angel, out of hearing

I am no longer cold.

mary angela douglas 13. 14., 19 january 2013

The Cyclops in REM Sleep (Dreams Of A Wedding)

the bride in the mirror of his Eye.

discards the sun, the smaller planets;

why would she need them now or

the woolly path from childhood, cherry bright

her mother hemmed in close firm stitches overnight

that wouldn’t ravel out

so she couldn’t catch cold coming home from the Anywhere

and shod

in her merry silk slippers, singing…

and radiant with her own radiance, still-

she seeks Forever, stepping out of the Chancery

telling herself, this must be the good I dreamed of:

while something murmurs

who let the Thunder in

through the ash trees

and every bough  is quivering

no.  it isn’t.

then everyone smiles so much

admiring the gown…and says she’s the

prima lily ringed by bridesmaids, after all

in pale Giselle her afterlife hues

the bride in the mirror of his eye  grew

vastly small; then

vastness flew

crowned with something glittery so they knew

it wasn’t her, how could it be

boarding a train that wouldn’t come back

because there is no station

and she’ll awake to a  matinee scattering now

of a dream within a dream of all that she believed

 in, forfeited

she must she must she must the Chorus chimes

dissolve into a perpetual Roaring as if, on cue;

they’ll say though not so openly as before

it’s like the wave purling from the shore my dear my dear

when it hits the rocks;

you’ll get the hang of it,

we’ll help you till you do…

except except the wave turns back she thinks

(while she still can) and is free, that way

occasionally in the tide of things from day to day

to talk to God or the winds in spring

without anyone knowing  anything

or having to.

but days have gone or just grown dim

while she’s so quiet, turned within and can’t be found

in the fractioning mirror of his eye of childlike puzzlement.

not quite, distress

that there’s a gaping where the green wind blew

sometime in April

and the kaleidoscope doesn’t work

mary angela douglas 8 january 2013