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

All ThingsYou May Expect To Shine

[at Christmastime]

[“Greater love than this, has no man, that he lay down His life for a friend.”

-Jesus]

all the things you may expect to shine

can fall between the cracks of vagrant stars or sidewalks

never glistening at all beside the lost marbles, jacks, and

mercury dimes you know are all still in there.

and you are unornamented

and your branches cannot hold

all this through long ages

for even an instant longer

while they measure you

for a costume in

the Pageant of Nothing,

holding you hostage

to the solstice snowmen on an

elementary stage.

O beknighted Child.

Sing, Noel, though you are banished for it

by the fathers of the long frost, everywhere.

somewhere, something waits and bides all Time, again;

and unexpectedly, the gales begin to turn

on a fragrance from a winter garden

you once thought you learned the music to;

so fugitive, you thought you may have dreamed it all

when you were home sick from school and

stuffed with fairytales and mentholatum in

the drifting counterpanes,

back to life and missed homework

redolent with the outside air 

brought in a little judgmentally

by cheerful, car-coated classmates you barely knew…

and unnamed dread.

but lowly beyond belief, He is:

accrued like a pearl in a sea of darkness

and silent, tear on tear

while small horrors thundered
and their retinues.
and their retinues.

and everything you fought

you have forgotten;  the stick-like words they said

the silly, sicled sighs, the paper wadded landings.

kick through the pebbles they pebbled you with,

debris they wrapped in fancy paper

(before they threw) smiling before the Teacher's face.

it’s only rubble now though yesterday their towers grew

though not by grace.

now that the Light of all lights appears

in your own skies now in God’s own time each tinted year

and pastel bulbed and bright through mist fraught windowpanes

canceling the shadows Forever as many times as you cry out for it

of the puppeteers with their vast holdings

and talent for mimicry that know how to

dig in for the long haul

fox-holed in your gleaming mind or

rabitting at the children’s parties to much applause

to pointless punch and cookies, and cake that crumbles
and breaks off at the end

of the dime store holly rimmed paper plates too paper thin.

while your embarrassment shines through the room
 as though it were candlelabra.

you just want to go home where the real Christmas is.

never mind that in these latter days

the thwarted herods of the work-a-day
 having been brought word of your soul

are trumpeting it all over town  that it’s all over for you, now-

and calling the caterers a little prematurely,b.c.e…

while mysteriously the Sundial gathers force
in a forgotten rose garden in the snow
indicating what can't be predicted
it’s not the end of the world, now, is it?
Grandmother whispered softly

Light, pure light.

Be not dismayed.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2012

Pavane Of The Silver Beads

I will sew silver beads onto the night;

and sing the chanson the princess left behind

when moving from one universe to another

here is the rose thread for the sun when it’s all over;

and the pearl accents for the impossible.

somewhere is stashed the reason to go on

and it just keeps sparkling, though we can’t say why

mary angela douglas 15 december 2012

Pasting The Book Of Hearts By The Paper-doll Stream

“Thou tellest my wanderings; put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in Thy book?”

Psalm 56:8, The Holy Bible

“Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.”

Psalm 84: 3, The Holy Bible

[in memory of my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas]

pasting the book of hearts by the paper-doll stream

I paper-cut the moon and the glitter from antique cards

hoping it would make You appear too soon, my Lord

and the hedges bloom long before spring,

time-lapsed, lilting into a golden light.

It’s the perfect silhouette of a world in Hans

Christian Anderson I still seek or the onion towers’

reckoning In full colour: scarred are the skies the wide world over

for the poet blinded for his imagination.

yet he still sees, spurring the moon bright horses on

for our Lady of the Fleur-di-Lis and the rose gardens:

toward her never collapsing lucidity.

and now, and now again I grieve on the scissoring cello

of the fairytale ellipse like Shoshtakovich-

recording the eclipse at land’s end.

I ‘ll make you apple blossoms pink waxed

on blue crayoned pages

and later, the cherry repetitions of a heart in construction paper 

but now, no longer measuring the cocoa out at Christmastime

the xxxs and the oooos…

whole countries seem to be cut off overnight

from the crystalized candy-cane singing, the Holy Night

she is so far from the land.

and God goes collecting the rosewater tears

of the daughters the daughters the daughters

and the pink dominoes of the childhoods

falling, falling through your 40 year misdiagnosis and

the country you used to come from.

let it all be momentary:

do not weep ma mere

in the courtyard where the artist

condemned to linger

traces on the air allotted him

the roses no one sees and colors them in.

we will archive everything

In poems without number

convinced of an afterlife

pale pink and blue  

where megaphones cannot blare

this cannot be (they mean your soul)

and neighborhoods

turn to pour the stone cold kitchen coffee out

never dreaming you’re right there in a dress of pure magenta.

a smile like Alencon…

one instant ever after…

I’m weeping paper lace in an endless stream

to wrap the flowers for a small bouquet

for the one in a thousand’s thousand

who knew how to read the music this way:

it’s long ago we played in the late afternoon

that the world could not be banished anymore

that someone would recognize our Fate

and that we still hear our mothers calling

from an orchid twilight

all the way from Eden or the State Hospital.

mary angela douglas 30 november, 2, 3 december 2012

A Song Of Ascents

[“Ah, Christ I love you rings to the wild sky”

-Allen Tate (from Sonnets to Christmas)]

climbing His laddered orchards to the sky,

Christ is the wound I live in till I die;

the one of pure gold, the one

unfurnished-

why is the why I keep on asking still so

hard to find among all orphaned syllables in disguise;

the thing you did far better than

anyone has ever done on the tumbreled way:  leaning into

our eyes, you rose.

why do they want to drag you back each time of day

again and again to that same hill – skeptical of

Glory; eyeing your splintered heart with the old surmise

of the selfsame jackdaw disorders:  reprised

and preening.

and everything is

as though you had never finished what you started.

I’m climbing your gleaming orchards to the sky-

the ladders kicked out from under-

following the deep marks in the snow the

deep marks in the snow the

ghost of water beckoning in the sun-

the chivalrous pall-

the starry storied passage through the endless ruins-

to the only country I can recognize

at all

mary angela douglas november 18, 19 2012

Bluebird

[to Maurice Maeterlinck author of "The Bluebird"]

there is a soul in light you said

and blue birds nestled in the folds of night that you may find.

why then are we still weeping on the shores so near the floods

that took it all away

before we learned to carry it all inside

from kingdom to kingdom,

and always?

In the Land of Memory dear Shades of the long ago

fall away, beseeching, please turn aside down this

folkloric lane, won’t you?

we’ll have bread and cherries

under late summer's trees, or

toasted cheese on a fork

near the winter hearth and bowls

brimful of cream or is it dream in an Alpine spring

and then, dream more...

a history made of lead weighs down on the heart too

imperceptibly so that we do not know we do not hear you

rustling the raspberries.

now they will slam the door on you

as if you were a cheap peddler

if they even see you at all,

stamping with a modern library’s stamp:

"DISCARD".

but I can see the shine of something, still not dead

all made of fantastic speaking twined

from a rubied thread

children leaving home may still find, sometime,

tangling them in the woods again

in golden gazing up or

whenever they spill the sugar for the Tea

imagining they are grown-up now, irretrievably-

they may remember suddenly,

exactly why they came

and, like a flash of something brilliant

in the world they only think they see-

Who sent them

mary angela douglas 3, 10 november 2012

Aftermirage In The Violet Snow

I did not imagine the hush of the holly stars.

the crunch of the white alphabet

newly fallen from heaven

the enchanted glass surfaces crackling

after the ice storms or

the blue-gold icicled xylophone tears-

near the lavender eaves.

Oh Damozel…

it’s not that peripherally dreamed that

in an ivory wind my soul was gathered,

in hidden vespers written on a crystal slate

in firm handwriting with a Christmas fountain pen.

oh why did you not look back, forgetful child

so used to hearing the angels sing and making the

emerald no, the ruby partridges scatter just by moving your arms

as though they were wings.

or what made you later than late

when the golden pear

slipped shadowy from its branch

in your plain sight glittering

(it would have been if you hadn’t dawdled over your cereal

said your sister)

and before sifting under

the drifts of cream you found out were unsugared

unexpectedly.

you could have scooped up everything then

and brought it back into the house for Mama,

violet glaced-

where we would have been suddenly rich with Forever.

mary angela douglas 10 november 2012

Raven Snow

[prelude for the left-hand]

I lost one wing and one wing only

torn from the skies in a raven snow.

how could I go back to find it all alone

who could not find the space between the letters

though they were made of gold.

I lost more than this: the sun

the keening of a larger wind caught claw-like   

in a cramped style and then let go to fend or not at all.

how bright the berries from low lying shrubs appeared

on that dim holiday

inedible as tears.

begin to fall from the high angelic distances you loved

the ancient mockers call, harp stinging

as the white bees fly, finding the wounds they were meant to find and

live in for a season.

my words you have broken in two for no Godly reason

and sewn them into a frozen stone

so that they will not fly from here

mary angela douglas 3-4 november 2012

Note on the poem: this poem appears to be dark.  look again and you will find an escape clause in it so to speak.I always have light and hope in my poem built in.  the key in this poem among others is "for a season"

I also want to mention another inspiration for this poem was a pianist who started transcribing music for the left hand only when he lost the use of the right.  Incidentally I typed, composed and felt this poem with my left hand only (and right hand index finger) as my right hand has swollen up.  Not important just a foot note or a hand note.  And there is a famous poet perhaps in translation who once wrote of a blizzard as a swarming of white bees though I can't remember his name.  What an image straight from the Snow Queen's Palace.  In my poem the white bees are not necessarily bees as they are so ineffectual as to have to find previous wounds to lodge in rather than being able to sting on their own.  It is all about appearances.

It appears flight, music, life are no lomger possible.  And yet, they are. This is both my experience and my holy faith. (in God.  in Christ)

I Saw A Shimmering Country in The Clouds

[to the memory of my Grandmother at the piano]  

I saw a shimmering country in the clouds

and I cried.

Rose-petal showered was that morning,

honey spread on bread, toasted clear amber;

welcome on marigold welcoming farther and farther away

yet gathered within, a white flowered perfume unstoppered

elegantly for the Lord.

and rose-gold note sustained.

where will we be fed again

as in the kingdoms wavering between

sleep and the almost jeweled but

seldom crowned on this side of things.

the blue grass fades past the windows

whirling out of Oz with the four leaf clover

pressed in the book of the Pleiades.

I met sheer poets there, so early in the day

before the long rains came;

plaster of paris clarity of the great composers.

and after the zinnias.

behind these winter trees the skies are mauve

but chords on a cloud piano seem so unresolved.

like the nightingale trill in my one nocturne.

now who has led them away in chains

missing the harp’s glissando

under the fifth column

of the Stars-

mary angela douglas 23=24 october 2012