Beauty Itself Is Burning Down: To Notre Dame

BEAUTY ITSELF IS BURNING DOWN: TO NOTRE DAME

beauty itself is burning down
a newsman cried
with Notre Dame lit like a torch

against the sunset sky
what can we say
from faraway

will the rose windows melt inside
I wondered, can it be so many saints have died
and now their images too their agonies renewed

for another contract, lease

is the name for Paris, rue,
not rosemary, please forget me
what I knew or thought I knew of

Hugo, I thought randomly

cathedrals burning in a green april
april, the cruelest
does the world skip a beat in an afternoon

of eight centuries
the world within the world

we never see
not being visionary

the cathedral erupting into great roses
in a penultimate Spring
the cathedral a great green candle

consumed for the Lord

as if by example, we should be shorn
of our somnombulance
in the lily of this hour

with the traffic no longer surging, transfixed

in the rose of its crumbling
singing, singing singing
the bell into the tower

the tower withstanding

the bell in the tower
the bell in the tower
beyond all wars and scars

the little mockeries in peace time

and yet, crowds grew
and thronged the singeing avenues
willing the walls to stay

for hours and hours
the spire of Notre Dame
our lady's arrow-sorrow

lit in a golden flame, flickered, floated sideways
what next? The flaking, flinging down of stars. the moon falls into the earth, a mirror no longer

ashes for beauty?

time itself collapsed in a deep black hole

remnants of a single spring twilight
our souls in the rubble still singing.
will not cease, will not leave it this way

on this, no calendar's day.

mary angela douglas 15 april 2019

Late Summer

for my sister Sharon (yet again)

you'll wear your trapeze pink
and dangle from a cloud
or we'll go gleefully

to the five and dime
in search of dangly earrings
once upon a time

and come back with hair ribbons instead.
lilac cologne.
new stationery with fanciful borders.

that was the summer we planned.
and hamburger stands
and blowing out straws

at our Grandfather
sitting at the little table
thinking we were grownups

while he beamed.
and we breathed in pink and green

watermelon after the games.
already we were full up on cracker jacks
but he would have to explain

to Grandmother
why we looked sick
at the mention of supper.

though double dipped ice cream
was not amiss.
I remember this.

how the mown grass fragrance
made me want to never leave.
the drone of airplanes above

the vivid zinnias.
and the sky trails.
how I cherished

getting the mail
full up with school ordered paperbacks.
the summer classics.

the quick fizz of coca cola
in the jelly glasses
poured over ice.

the sifting of days.
the malted ways.
piano pieces in the afternoons.

I miss you all.
and call you over
the backyard fences of Heaven.

mary angela douglas 14 april 2019

We'll Find Ruby Slippers For The Dolls

we'll find ruby slippers for the dolls;
and click, click, click, all of them.
and name them Dorothy one and two

to infinity. their Totos too. their bears.
we'll manage it.
we always do and give them tea in pairs

when relatives ply us with so many dolls
we could found a small kingdom for them.
so many Glindas!

what will we do with that many wishes
to go home...
if we knew

how easily we
would slip through the gate
and not return.

that the rose briar hedges would prove
impenetrable

we would have saved them all;
the wands too.the Christmas changes of outfits.
but how could we know then

the emerald wind
was once.
once only.

and irreversible.

mary angela douglas 14 april 2019

Reflet Dans L'eau

should there be flower competitions
we asked of our garden green days
is this compatible with

the waltzes for flowers
and our new Easter outfits
in lilac and rose?

ecru lace, the edging on clouds.

who knows why. or how
we loved to drift in this way
down flowery paths

with our flower philosophies

the winds blowing petals before us
as if we were princesses,
and only they knew.

that leads only to more flowers,
corsages in the afternons,
a hint of Chopin, Faure...

of the faraway.
if the world were like this...!
only to be, to live

to arrange the hyacinths
in a vase with a green blue glaze
and so, to mark Time

with the flower festivals;
the cherry trees like a vast sky
above you where you walk

with your small songs
the trace of your watercolours
beside you, the ghosts of all pastels

in the reflecting pools.
the blue green fountains
and nothing is amiss.

I dream of this.

mary angela douglas 14 april 2019

The Rains Are Sweeping the Canyons While We're All Inside

beautiful canyons spanned the distance
but we were all at work.
at school.

in the laundry rooms.
watching tv.

what if it had been different
what if we hadnt kept our heads down
when the Perseids showered

their gold for free.
what if freedom was for beauty.

playing the mandolin
under the moon.

what if candy cane deliberations
in the Christmas drug stores
at the last minute, while the snow flew

had meant everything always.
and the Nativity.
set in the window

with its yellow bulbed star
its radiance
and the beauty

spanning the distance
had been
where we lived

instead of just
keeping our heads down.
taking someone else's word for it

taking one test in the row
and passing the rest down soundlessly
when the silver rains swept through;

motionless. registering only

all the second hand things we knew.
or were expected to.

mary angela douglas `12 april 2019

I Had A Golden Necklace

I had a golden necklace.

this was flowers.

the light through light rain.

the jeweled bird flown.

I had a mist called home.

and honey, on the table;

a summer brimmed over.

this was buttered bread.

a kind word said.

this was stars; or braided clover

then, Christmastide,

the heralds. the damson sky.

the last beaded rainbow

on the pane of "goodbye".

mary angela douglas 8 april 2019

Awake

[a piano piece for my sister]

is that the far kingdom she asked
through sleep misted eyes
through sleigh bells

through the tolling of dreams
small angels held her hands
I knew she was there

though the room had faded into space
the space between keys when you are little
with your first piano piece

and proud; is it Christmas there already
I heard her say in the sharp breeze
in the blue breeze turning the corner

where our roof froze over and the leaves
not long ago, on the trees, soft gardenias
in an in between season the colour of clouds.

you were clad in snow and if I could have
I would have painted you in blue and rose
the way you looked at five or four

in your first sun dress
oh don't get cold I cried aloud in my sleep
then everything vanished.

and I was what they call in this life,
on any green apriled evening
wrapped in pearl occasions like a first concerto

younger then,
and "awake."


mary angela douglas 8 april 2019

After The Russian

black snow descended in Malevich square
that was when I turned the corner
and then another, edged in the raveling of lace

it's late my mother it's unearthly
we ate pears at Christmas in the matchstick flare
I dreamed up in a dream when we were almost

beyond compare; compere,
folkloric embroidered with the memory of snow
soon the harvests won't come

drum circles will emerge
but all I heard
was nothing compared

with Shoshtakovich.
violins weeping the black snows.
it's the absence of light

that will not count as a country in Heaven
no matter how hard they try
to stop the swallows

when they fly with a single crumbling edict
to carry poetry into a furnace
and the furnace never dies

and black snow is descending
violas at  the end, the last jette
why pretend otherwise

you could really forget

why look at spires through a mist
and imagine this as 
a fairy tale

milk white; prescient with opals
I was in an orchard of whys
and no one could fell me.

mary angela douglas 7 april 2019

Foam

on the other side of the door,
in a house without a floor
I cried to the reticent air

how can you have no stair
that I some entrance may make
in a dream moss green as a lake

or why does the only key
fall into the skies,
away from me

should I wear violets,
lost at sea, weaving far from memory,
the dress of mermaid foam

who could not call earth, 'home'.

Moire, it was mine,
this shell of Time;
these things that shine

or were...
submerged in a dredge of Pearl-
dissolving world oh world

in the twilight hour
not more than this:
fern music curled

in a little mist;

pine branch, in a milk white
circlet of stones
where the ending has to die alone
rose sessions adjourned

with the fine thing I learned
the flower pot breaks

Forever to make,
that I thy poem
Thee may not forsake.

mary angela douglas 31 march 2019 

That Children May No Longer

for children trapped in wishing wells
for all of my hushed nightingales
for the carrion crow that caws from the bleachers:
carry this up to God in a silver slipper
that children may no longer
live among thorns.

Mary Angela Douglas 26 march 2019

Tears Of Sleeping Birds (final draft)

[de lacrimis Christi

tears of sleeping birds this evening I heard or read

from the National Geographic blurb, tears of sleeping

birds on rare occasions…

moths sip the tears of sleeping birds in Brazil.

do they get their fill I wondered of salt,

of the disappeared too early.

it seemed so fairy tale real, disturbing

embroideries wrung from a fanciful tree

miraculously inferred; subconsciously

a wilderness resonance brought to bloom

vibration set, to crystal tuned and shattering:

the one gold leafed in an

unsettling country

milk and honey dried

where something dear has died

where coral moths are sought

and seldom caught sipping the

tears of sleeping birds.

what do the birds dream then.,

that there is no more sorrow

in the world?

or the utmost burglary possible

has been sanctioned.

the heart is a lake that rises

for the small bird fluttering in its sleep

incapable of the grief necessary.

who will deliver me now

from the fugitive years ahead

where nothing more can be said, referred to

but “the tears of sleeping birds…".

shall we quaff a thimbles worth

for everything on earth, for

what remains in that refrain-

that suddenly am I reminded of

like a safe broken into, with all the codes of

rectitude, of a trembling name or two;

an exquisite residue

dewdrop poised on a branch

as if it were Song:

before the sign of the dark sun;

Nadezhda Mandelstam

speaking of herself and Akhmatova

after Osip had gone said,

in those days we had no tears left…

trembling over a handful of poems.

the moths, drinking their tears.

the moths, drinking their tears.

mary angela douglas 24 january 2019;rev. 17 march 2019

As Centuries Gather Light

the wind fills up the pictures made of snow,
the silver brushed air
and everywhere it falls it lifts

the shadows from the avenues
from the roofs of sleeping houses
from the hydrants

and the moonlit overpass
it feels like sugar sifting through
the tall grasses

sugar without the sweetness or stickiness,
it does not cling;
and it falls over the lanes carelessly

without neatness
or compunction

till all is numb and no longer singing.
only the wind sings
only the wind speaks

and the snow is deep
as centuries, gathering light.

mary angela douglas 23 march 2019

Technical Writing: A Short Lament

I write in cherry filling
they write me back:
potato. no butter pat.

I write in curlicue frosting.
they only write in bossing.
day after day in a cubicle way

I'm bursting with so many things to say
not in addendums.
why can't I win them

over to a merrier way
cordially yours at least
with or without the cherries.

more than the crumbs
from the board room feast
in sleeting January.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2019

Promotion

I dreamed the Lord God put Marc Chagall
in charge of snowfalls.
Imagine how it all looked coming down

in candied colours all over town
and in the hills
how rainbows melted and refroze

above the rills.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2019

Everything Is Not A Contest If You Don't Want It To Be

everything is not a contest
if you don't want it to be
I don't want it to be.

what if they held auditions for the birds
what if some birds didn't make the cut
how triste we would be.

the forests filled with pared down song
maybe two. tops, three. what would the mute birds do
limited to:

whatever wasn't previously sung.

why should you wait for months
to hear back from the magazines
till Kingdom come

when you can go anywhere

in the great outdoors
maybe to the canyons
and recite for free

I like canyons better than magazines.
think of the echoes.
the resonance. the company

of blooming cacti keeping their secrets.
they know how it feels to be patient
awaiting their flowering, published to the winds.

patience doesn't really even come into it.

not being compared. not worrying about
first serial rights.they can fare.
friends with the starry nights

unaware of the contradictions and the spite
of trying to prove in a dry spell
to the resident cognescenti

they really are capable of flowering.
meanwhile they defend themselves
from condescending smiles

with their prickles like Exupery's rose.
well, they might.they could. who knows.
really, they don't have to do anything.

just wait for the desert Spring.
isn't that something worth singing about?

flower on your own. crawling to no throne.
you will know
the happiness of not being paid in copies.

not bartering your Manhattan for trinkets.
of singing because you want to.
painting or dreaming.

skipping in the lanes.
sans the workshop disdain.

the grim reengineering
right within your hearing
for the MFA.

stand in the clearing.
far from the fray.

joy is better that way.

sound never dies they say.
already you would be immortal
sing song saying it

even in your dust bunnied room.
even in a tomb.

due to the laws of sonics.
happy in your phonics.

barely whisper your latest sonnet
to a crowd of angels...

sound never dies. nor music.
music in God, the trefoil union intact.
the heart singing all on its own

undeterred, silvery perhaps,unbeknownst.
like a ghost.
in its own mystique.

proofread by no creep;
poor editor with no sleep.

a heightening mirage

leaving its sound print, invisible track upon
the open universe soaring above the pines

so that the leaves sigh.the upper atmosphere.
clouds in their vagueness;
the air, bursting with wings

and turquoise.

mary angela douglas 18 march 2019

Learning

LEARNING


gold flakes off the sun
or stardust streams from the once upons
and suddenly you stand inside the crystal.
not outside, looking at the diagram again, uncomprehending.
or feel on your face the winds of Athens,
Shakespeare rising
and you, the Dialogues, you are the plays, each one
as though you spoke each word in your sleep originally.
or it's bright midsommer on a jam coloured day
when you feel called inside the treasure heaped caves
eluding chores
and wander in...
the dream within the dream and Calderon...
oh life, the fleeting the beautiful has come and gone
and now returned, you hear the light leaves murmur
in their song that you like Shelley are the King of clouds.
or Queen of the May or the Saint envisioning the
curative fountains, directed to find them
on some Saturday...
what century am I today you feel like Alice
still in the same blue dress wondering at her desk that
then the strawberries gleamed too
in Junes and children sat in school
reciting golden numbers feeling metrics
like the drone of bees outside the open windows
sanguine amid the flowers
till called to attention. in their new school shoes
from such reveries...on the eve of undeclared war
or simple as cream, the walking out the doors
to waiting trains;
the winter seeds sown.
let us revisit these scenes
all  the way down to their sunless seas
the Christmas ghost pleads (or Coleridge, who knows)
and you go with them  through the clouded dells
to all that you could never spell
or with the Blessed Damozel
to forgotten wishing wells, or come upon shelves unshelved of
untranslated biographies
in fragments, seraphs in tears
for all the unrecorded years...

one star upon a stone
that sang out:"Christ!" along a tolling road
and you elucidating, on your way, your own
while some take orders for a seamless garment

the cost of dreams the cost of dreams the cost of dreams


mary angela douglas 16 march 2019...