HAMELIN (REPOSTED AND REVISED)

(Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:

if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there

PSALM 139:7-8)

I saw crown molding tip the walls

of an unbelievable stage-set, real, at the time-

set the table

they will tell you everything

you’re entitled to know

while sipping their rubicund tea

on a lush and leafy afternoon you dream

is still your very own-

with your whole life ahead of you

as the saying goes

and still so near your own real

childhood home you could walk back there and be done with this

Why didn’t you

before they trained you not to love

or even be, as if they could…

and to fill their hands with your heirloom pearls

signed over in your sugurland sleep: for them….

but I learned slow and never

to believe

all their lost lovely angels far from home and

to fight the battles only

I could see –to know what’s mine

alone

not underwritten by game theorists

or Pavlov’s pirates, looting my bright way…

as from the beginning of clowns-

and mesalliance

oh all my faceless springs in the name of God,

my God, unused and lilac-

I’d teach the children not to ride

that monochromatic ferris standing by

the carnival children modified to sell: flowers waxen friendship-

and world peace...

I'll sing you the song my mother lent me

as she died:

I saw the cream of God

brim at the top

and those who skimmed and skimmed

rich bubbles from my only Soul and from my rainbow

hallowed, haloed home

I saw their skinflint empires rise

and the parties they threw each other

at each eclipse

who could explain

the vacancies of cranes, the heart's accustomed numbness

on the tilting horizons that they owned

and all the summers subcontracted out and

sparkleless

what made me turn around

to find

the trapdoor in the Night and

it was God up late, still

counting the tears of those waylaid

as if they never stopped being:

His own embroidery forever-

“Here’s your doll finery,” He whispered.

in the voice of all rosepetals-

“I’ve hidden it here.”

You are -pure life - I cried - I’ll never give away-

as if I could…

reward the kidnappers

oh my King where wishes turn to palms if we endure;

I’ll buy fresh groceries, pay the rent and

find the playground where they’re waiting still:

all my tin soldiers whirring in the dust-

I’m caught in

the lace of the day

and cannot leave You-

mary angela douglas 1-2 october 2011;4 august 2022;11 march 2023

SONG FOR THE LAST INTERVIEW (REPOSTED)

 

Song For The Last Interview

'it will flame out like shining from shook foil'
-Gerard Manley Hopkins

for Dr. Robert Joseph Connelly, San Antonio, in memorium
,

this is for the Word born whole
for the poetry-riven sky
for the strength to recognize a lie

for the breakable language
unbroken still
by the bent word

built for profit,
not for truth.

this is my sigh in the glass blown
air for the glass blown disappearing act of
stars in the last nights

appearing,
disarming, chiming in the wind
that only angels bring

the pause (finally, in excoriating speech,
-your very own-)
where you collect yourself
if not your things

from one last day at work
or home
picking your report card up

in June from the ghost school,
from the ghosts.

this is for cornbread heirlooms,
for afternoons of strawberries
and cream -

for the Holy Ghost dressed in pale green
for the whole world seen
through stereoscopic Disney,

Christmas stenciled windows;
the least view of small
pink flowers bordering the front

sidewalk, goodbye...

this is for God
who hears and sees the
honey tinged questions'

finding fault
so that permanent records
continue to reflect
your waywardness in
never having the exact

amount of change
this is for the second you know

you have to leave
the home you love
so much earlier than you planned
with only three dresses packed
in a

walnut, and the Lord's prayer on a dime:
fixing the hall clock in your memory
the jelly glasses
and the willow-ware, the brightness of pennies

over other denominations...

repairing your chiffon shadow
on the way with your personal sewing kit
to honor those who raised you
and read you fairytales

as though from great distances.

this is for
no safe-houses on the horizon
least of all the yellow brick one
across the street

where children climb trees
and eat the whole summer
an entire orchard of homeade

peach ice cream...

this is for the deep-starred journey
undertaken
for the fools errands
for the straw that will never never

ever turn into gold
no matter how the Rumplestiltskins scream.
listen to me:

questionable friends
make the journey a million times
harder and give you the wrong
directions to the castle so
that you never find
the singing bird.
this is for trudging on alone

for crossing the border and
not looking back even when
the person coming with you
changes their mind at sunrise
and runs to tell on you.

this is for living
like the silence of the moon
and soon and soon

you will withdraw from a tiny shell
at the exact right moment in the interview, a
shining like shook foil shaken-
three dresses of compressed splendor
kept against the rain and
wrapped in violet tissue:

the one of vivid stars
the one of ornate flame
the one of cloudless cloudless blue

and, as if on cue, the opal angels move-
scattering the inquisitors;
settling old accounts
in scripts of gold

with not one scintilla of
asking anyone for permission.
for you were watched over
even while crocodiles wept
my child my child at
every nightmare's exit

by the Word unbroken:
by music heard in the wake of angels,
by undetainable Light...

mary angela douglas 30 june 2009 rev.7 december 2016

SNOW GLOBE VISION OF LA BELLE ET LA BETE (REPOSTED)

 

SNOW GLOBE VISION OF LA BELLE ET LA BETE

[to Christ in his sorrowful incarnations
(and after the film by Jean Cocteau)]


the teardrop diamonds in your hand

rueful rubies can't be spent
who are you really


do we even know


bearing our disfigurement
in the desolate garden,


most desolate Rose

is it too late?

are you still there?
turning the ring three times I pray

for the ancient fairytale trumpets


the snow-glitter ready to descend-


mary angela douglas 1 june 2010

SNOW DREAMED: FOR MARTIN BURKE (REPOSTED)

 

SNOW DREAMED: FOR MARTIN BURKE

 

[for the fine Irish-Belgian poet, playwright Martin Burke, in memoriam. and for his Marie-Anne

snow dreamed.

dreamed it could become white roses, 

lost brides

sudden angels.

snow dreamed it was something else besides

still somehow, snow

the flower without stem

the pause in music; 

waiting to begin

floating it longed to fly

flying it longed to lie on fences, 

rooftops, to become the town

the plains

never to turn to rain

and weeping.

snow dreamed and dreamed and dreamed

it was our sleeping

in bouquets extravagantly cold

and danced on the mittens of little children.

of ship avowals it dreamed at sea

and floating with the waves

it disappeared and who could tell it then

from foam

from Praise

and still, it dreamed until we all were snow

and delicate and forevers

branching and branching...

mary angela douglas 6 december 2017

Saturday, June 18, 2022

SHED NO TEARS, FOND UNICORN (REPOSTED)

(with ref.  to the "a mon seul desir" Lady with The Unicorn medieval tapestry at the Cluny Museum in Paris i only saw in a book, but nevertheless, cherish)

 shed no tears, fond Unicorn

golden are the tapestries, still,

I leave you to inhabit, shyly on these

museum walls,

in rooms with gilded conversations

guided tours-

beyond burgundy ropes of velvet

graze on, continually - with good will.

your hoof in my hand:

I hope you'll be discreet

munching the shadows of

departing guests

only a little

and the pastel mints at party's end.

Be brave, always.

I'm braiding my primrose stories

just for You

and the farther fields of honour.

mary angela douglas 30 may; 1 june 2010

THE RAIN IN HER PRISMED SONNETS

 

the rain in her prismed sonnets speaks to me

though you'd hardly believe it

gushing down drain pipes

and from the eaves

and from the summer leaves

so much so that I wonder why their

green watercolour does not drip off

and stain the pavements,

rippling the harps of ponds and hidden lakes.

wave after wave the sibilant rains recall

the feeling of comfort when I was small

or home from school for months

having come to term with all terms.

the air is shining

and I feel shining within

even now, as much as then

and christened.

mary angela douglas 1 august 2022

MEMENTO VIVERE (REPOSTED)

 

MEMENTO VIVERE

 

in loving memory to my mother, Mary Adalyn Douglas-Young (1927-1993)

     and

to Sara Teasdale (1894-1933) , with abiding respect

pink marigold suns have slipped away

like the cameo cares of Sara Teasdale

but I am here

with the dove-lapsed valentine

folded up I always meant to

send her, across time-

and the air of St. Louis

crumples like rose parchment

kindling lost kingdomes: 

are you there? 

as I hold out one cream starched

dawn's particular corner

for you to catch- dim orchards washed-

green rains...

forget-me-nots at tea

I'm dreaming a cloud

like an envelope. sepia-dipped

twice over. filled

with your manifold

weeping harps your sunbursts

but it's delayed, misplaced, 

and where

will I really be that

ringed with light again

sustaining when I can

the fleeting imprint of so many violet skies...

here at the orphaned window still

I trace your leaves and lilies through the mist

in tinctured starlight

scrapbook cherished

wishing you were here: 

weighing in scales of pearl the clockface moon

but the afternoon grows older, after all

the tide of wishes turns...

above the noise of mere battlefields

every singed and salvaged word

I praise

and look past

the garnet consolations of the epic dead

to see

white wave on wave

of your delight

bright words

never blind, inlaid

like fires in opal

self-contained

the rainbowed startled reveries (of God)    

inferred: 

and on - at last-

the unclasped fairytale page unwavering

the heart stenciled postscript of the child

who cried for Beauty

and was heard-

mary angela douglas 13-14 march 2011

===============================================================

*'Latin, remember to live'

Ride The Horse Of Gold

ride the horse of gold

not the one of pitch

use the broomstick to sweep

nor hasten the witch

tell the tale as it came

beginning in Light

and then the words

will come out all right.

mary angela douglas 31 july 2022

t

THE DEATH OF VAN GOGH (REPOSTED AND REVISED)

 there was a blue road, marbled with white

he thought it was water in the dying sun
and a field the clearest of lemons

I have carried this sunflower heart
he cried all silently until I can hardly stand
and now it beats without me

so that the crows can see
and the blue road intensified
as if it were the sea

the painted clouds weeping

will I disintegrate now
half wondering he wandered
dissolve into time past - stumbling-

and dip the brush at least, at last
into a glass of infinite colours Theo!
let me drink it up

and the blue road with it

drink up the sun as if it were absinthe
and give God back His colours lent
and a shot rings out

in a field the colour of lemons
and he clutches the gold of the sun
the feeling that life is done or seeping out

or bleeding in blues and yellows
and a burning, blurring wound
and senseles slaughter

of the sunflower heart

at noon a blue gold radiance,
dissolving into God;

the blue road intensifies into iris

and the field gnats mourn.

mary angela douglas 27 december 2017;29 july 2022

JENNY LIND (REPOSTED AND REVISED)

 

to Jenny Lind on the curve of Song
Hans Andersen wrote
in a rose leafed scrawl

to Jenny Lind.
to Jenny Lind on a mermaid shore
Hans Andersen cried

oh evermore I loved you, Jenny Lind.
but song is brief and life is wronged sometimes oh Jenny
my muted swan

drifts on the current and passes by
but Jenny Lind cannot espy
the awkward heart that is so nigh.

tin soldiering on he still salutes
Jenny Lind with the voice of a lute
Jenny Lind.

Jenny Lind in a pale blue shawl
why do you turn your face to the wall
and cast his embroideries out to sea

he only made for love of thee.

mary angela douglas 16 march 2020;29 july 2022

JANE EYRE (REPOSTED AND REVISED)

 

JANE EYRE

[to Charlotte Bronte]

Dove grey is the unfolding sky
above the lucid dreaming of her soul
shaken- still awake at midnight
the singular one in the household
to show

there is no love without truth
and she must leave, she knows.
stern conscience holds her lantern in the rains
and all she sees is God through torrents, through disdain,
through all the villages begging bread

from the living and the dead
from those who feign.
from bakers, tradesmen who won’t comprehend
she is the soul’s white flame
not derelict.

once she was walking down a faery lane
that ripened into summer's gold.
once she was painting ships without a rudder
pale green and foundering in an icy sea

somehow, still at liberty in the austere-extravagant imagination-
far above her given station
but not, oh not yet free.

ah, now, Lord Jesus, come and see
the frail figure lashed to the landscape
in no watered silk, in her wilderness

and to the hilt:

indomitable in Thee.

mary angela douglas 9 april 2013 rev. 28 march 2017;25 may 2019;rev 23 september 2020.

IT WAS THERE WE CHERISHED THE MEMORY OF STARS, PEACH MELBA (REPOSTED AND REVISED)

 

IT WAS THERE WE CHERISHED THE MEMORY OF STARS/PEACH MELBA

[“what a beautiful earth-turning”
-remark on a sunset by a character from a book I can’t remember the title of…(on my Grandmother’s shelf) ]

it was there we cherished the memory of stars,

that way station:
carnation crisp, delineated-
in the ice-box next to the lemon ice-box pie;geranium pink of kindest skies

and all the cooling winds-
apple-pie divided“a la mode”
for summer days ahead…
in almost crepe- de-chine.

”Peach Melba is the best dessert,”she said, for musicians.
flowers fade last on
the purple sides of hills and
neapolitan ice-cream*
still has everything
to recommend it…

I still know the time by the
crimson clock with snowy numerals…
the “Plan Ahead” sign with its cramped last letter…making the point.
the Psalms in my grandparents voices-
golden cherubs chiming candle-lit
around the angel-abra…

I hear the ice-cream
bell in fudgesickle-rhymes, running out with my sister;
dark blueberry popsicle wish just granted
in blueberry dusk
by my Grandfather’s swift-hearted two dimes for us.

His bright amber pennies flung into
the wishing well of the world…

remember the chill chimes of pink and green
watermelon non-pareill;I’m dividing the scent of cut-grass,
cut-glass shining evenly, to be fair
for the future of Light-
split everywhere by those unkind-

and Christmas days jangled
link by link on yellow-gold
charm bracelets-that pink-cake, swirled;

orange pomanders with cloves and other things glistening-
leading up to the one Star’s unimpeachable finale,
oh far charm in the sky of
His Nativity-these cannot wear out faithfulness.

the day wears gauze
embroidered in small rosebuds
tiny bells on the hem
doll mirrors stitched there

I’m only naming
all Your past miracles of sweet design-
so may I ask oh what is time?is it the kaleidoscope you keep

shaking that never breaks down
that it does not fail to launch into further
expositions:candy-apple or cathedral- spun;

the snowflake on your lost pearl mitten
still crystalized, incognito-
where it dropped from your hand- is it the small rubber ball that rolled

under the furniture when you weren’t looking
never found again
not even in the Dog’s mouth pried shut as if
by taffy-or is it the shipwrecked histories of dolls, unchronicled…
the sudden fires and fevers
a few legalized captivities unprolonged
that took the antique
babies straight into God…at once
and unmistakably-
while the angel cousins looked on...

our reenactments, when we played

is it in pictures on the wall-the remaining souvenirs:

a something eternal showing through;
the malt-frothy clouds in the painting
still may show ever deeper shades of
green-blue, peach, pale yellow-

when the Strawberry wick of afternoons
dissolves like jams on the toast of a sky or
is pink- glassed -momentarily- in the china cabinet

reflected, reflecting-etched, carefully

the yearning rose faces
leaning in
of long-ago children
admiring the teacups endlessly;
beyond sorrow now, if not, Beauty-

mary angela douglas 14=15 march 2012;28 july 2022

I SAW THE GHOST OF WALTER DE LA MARE (REPOSTED, REVISED)

 

I saw the ghost of Walter de la mare

leaning, on an April curve of music,

unaware

I saw his hands of tender glass

and the thin china he was drinking from,

reflective, the dark raspberry still waters

of beauty he drew up in pailfuls-

the silver pooling stars

at his beck and call-

the curio cabinets bedizened,

strongholds of childhood jams

and the apricot laughter of the cherubim,

by his side.

now acorn cups half brim from twilight rain

the fairy feast’s abandoned, he complained

“Is there anybody there”?

he said, answering his own soul alone

“the whispering trees of Eden”,

he wept.

they pour the ocean into a thimble

our golden ships may founder in the Moss,

there are other losses,

song is made desolate, Walter de la mare

long years since your flag was

lowered to the ground,

marring with pearl

mere semblances of Music

everafter.

rust from the muted region’s flaking.

your antique tears I brushed away,

no one’s watercolor, for so long.

mary angela douglas 20-21 december 2009; 27 july 2022

PLEASE NOTE: THE TWO LINES IN QUOTES ARE DE LA MARE'S OWN WORDS IN TWO OF HIS POEMS: The Listeners, and Goodbye. I do think his poem Goodbye, outside of the King James Bible, is the most beautiful poem in the English language

In A Ghost Town Frame Of Mind

there's thunder like a rumor in the air all day

or maybe the ghost train on its way

it's impossible to tell are they staying or going

portmanteaus at hand or is this a haunted land

or is it kind of a spell when waiting is alleviated

by the sound effects of storms

or are we forewarned

like sailors on these ships of dust

who long ago had turned to rust

packing it all in, heave desert anchors, ho!

still wondering where the wave begins

the shore retreats beating the querulous question sweet

like an ineffectual drum

ghost armies on the run

does anybody know

did anyone ever show up

at the depot to meet you?

mary angela douglas 25 july 2022

It Was Certain

it was certain the legend was beautiful

as time can be, when viewed from eternity

as truth is, when the tournaments wear out

and the reasons for fighting

who could deny the shimmering on the lake

the hand upraised with the glittering sword

sinking down

sinking down as the sun is sinking down

covering the hills with a carmine light

that later certain painters will immortalize

at least in fragmentary dreams

when the cream of the fairytale

will spill out on the stone flagged floor

and you will start singing

a song you don't know anymore.

for certain, the beautiful song.

mary angela douglas 24 july 2022

The Rumors Squelched

 

may the air grow rich with wonder

may green return for the coloured in trees

the air be full up with unaccountable sparkles

and we be at our summer ease

we be at our ease to sing full throated

enriched and enriching with our desert blooms

all the naysayers with all their talking

that they heard we had died too soon.

mary angela douglas 23 july 2022