The Striped Goodness Of The Candy Cane Carousels

[for every child who ever wished it could be Christmas in summer, too (and spring, and fall...)

the striped goodness of the candy cane carousels

cannot diminish; the horses breathing varicoloured

fire and orbiting the part of the pasture someone earlier

declared: this is the county fair.

set stakes and dream; the big tent is your home.

o there's no homework there.

my taffy apples I will keep awhile.

the fruit flavored, coloured ices in a cone

of glacial delight. and pink spun, the mystical

sugar on the distaff of plain fun.

here you forget it's so far to Christmas.

and think, what if the child Jesus was born in summer?

we would have let him ride for free on everything

when he got a little older.

penny candies spilling from his pockets

with a strange, star-like glow.

and the shepherds winning lambs in every colour

for their sweethearts.

and meadow jams and flowers

of Tyrian purple and the rarer, scarlet.

mary angela douglas 21 july 2014

They Come No More

through her diamond windowpanes, a little recessed,

she saw the pageantry of ghosts.  alas. they come no more.

and the regalia of dreams is dead, half-dead.

she was never that good at fractions, chalk scratched

on an emerald slate

while longing to be somewhere else.

longing to be someone else in another time and place

is no disgrace said the Queen Mother, once.

it could prove useful by and by.

but now I've stitched your cherry petticoat in all three places

the royal puppy chewed at play while you were dancing

on the pond's sweet winter glaze of ice.

and you'll look nice in your mimosa overskirt of tulle,

organaza whatever it is that we've got left from

our last move from our last castle, stashed away.

and the regalia of ghosts is stashed away now, too.

they come no more.

the heart is jettisoned;

the valentine thread

that ruby, shone.

the pink-shored maps.

the amber saps of trees; knights in their plumes,

ladies to the door.

the moonlight viewed as poetry, the sun, the sea.

the bells clang uselessly now

from the ghost cathedrals,

vexing the atheists.

mary angela douglas 21 july 2014

Beauty Remembers The Poet

we've saved a lot of gold in the cloud banks today

dreamed the painters down-at-elbow

half asleep

before it seeped through and children said

but we don't remember it being there, before

now the small birds fling themselves against the

stars and it doesn't seem so far from here to there.

and we will prop our ladders against the skies

to gather the golden apples Yeats loved so.

perhaps he will shake the tree of Heaven

oh, just this once, he sighed from far away.

and she was happy with all that glaced fruit

heaped up at her wandering feet

in the silvered over grasses

somewhere clear

mary angela douglas 20 july 2014

Slipper Song With A Matching Dress

the soul in her simple dress was so happy.

do you remember?

the one with summer pockets;

the danceable one that whirled convincingly

like something cloudy, clouded, clouding.

but now the last leaves on the trees can't bear to

leave the already mourning branches and

it's been hard to say anything new to no one.

still, threadbare, the fairytale slippers will last

with care,

somewhat longer than you expected

from the first:

fresh from the glimmering Godmother,

"sugar pink ballet leather."

mary angela douglas 20 july 2014

Not All the Branching Paths Are Gold

not all the branching paths are gold

she told herself in sudden moonlight

even though it seems

so, chided the small breezes through

the ivoried harps of trees; where should

I turn in these thin slippers

embroidered with cherries;

will kingdoms keep beneath the snows?

or anyone record for whoever's interested later

coming on the scene in a peach bartered spring-

this was the coldest winter seen by

all the melting poets,

ever after

mary angela douglas 20 july 2014

And Were You Dreaming In The Licorice Night

Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing, And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the ring; But most would use no wing. O fools (said I) thus to prefer dark night Before true light, To live in grots and caves, and hate the day Because it shews the way, The way, which from this dead and dark abode Leads up to God, A way where you might tread the sun, and be More bright than he. But as I did their madness so discuss One whisper'd thus, "This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for his bride." Henry Vaughn, The Ring

[again, to Valerie Macon, true poet laureate of North Carolina- on the true nature of the poetic calling, ultimately, as a calling from God

and to Joseph Brodsky, who said at his trial in the USSR (being tried for being a poet and accused for that presumption, "you parasite," they said) while he said, simply, "I thought that was something decided by God."]

Esse Quam Videri*

and were you dreaming in the licorice night that words

like vagrant stars drifted through your window?

and did they settle like snows of your young Decembers

on the covers, setting up their illusory summer camps?

oh yes. and with orangeade on tap and the strawberry swirled; conversant with all the dolls.

and could you see, through the semi-transparent tribunals

of poets, even then,  trying the poets they wouldn't let through their chain-linked honorariums?

oh fences dissolved for you, perhaps, as in the

paintings of the Impressionists and

you were living then in their springtime washed in pink and 

green,who measured time in the colours of the flowers

and the violet shadows flared.  and you were

in love with the licorice night

and thought God made the stars for only you.

and thought that poetry was

the bright, bright ring endowed by Him,

for you, a chosen bride of words, and to you and

you, perhaps, reading this and, aren't we linked

by love alone in the chain of eternal

poets, poetry who were never chained, being loved by God?

and this is pearl scented like the gardenias

in our grandmother's gardens;

like the magnolia bush weeping white linen in a vast 

perfume they cannot pretend to know

who crucify, if only they could,

the glow of flowers they could not have created.

mary angela douglas 20 july 2014;rev. 20 april 2015

*Latin for: To Be Rather Than To Seem, State motto of North Carolina...

The Poets War Against Poetry While The Amateurs Are Comforted

[to Valerie Macon, poet laureate of North Carolina for just six days who resigned on July 17, 2014 because other, former poet laureates and many others in the literary community ganged up on her because she was only a "self-published" poet (at least, it seemed that way to me and to many others)

and who said in her resignation letter to everyone. don't forget to love poetry even if you haven't collected accolades...

and, we won't.  As for those whose scorn for the self-published seems unbounded, if you want to drive the Muse from your own door, attacking a fellow poet, (no matter how lacking in credentials you think they are) like a pack of wild dogs - in broad daylight - should suffice.]

who will He send, the angels of saffron?

this time, the ones of sheer starlight small children

see straight through?

the ones of green linen

soothing the wounds. the wounded.

once again on earth, cried the violet

shadows, poets fight poetry with their inverted shields

their plumes upside down backwards on their horses

running down the unqualified.

plaintive on a lute in a far away time someone strummed

a few notes under the moonlight.  thank God no one heard.

or just a few friends.  and song flowed under the doors, through

the chinks of the windows and was welcomed.

sit down at the table, here is dark bread, our last slice

and spring-cooled butter. jam of the summer strawberries we kept

just for you and you recited for no money at all

the beauty of the day gone by and how the angels tread

on clouds of rose and gold above our worst hour and children
 folded up their

tiny griefs and grasped with both hands the moonlight appearing at the door that never wanted to leave again.

and neither, neither did we.

mary angela douglas 18 july 2014

Book Condition: (Fairest Of The) Fair

this book is not a former library book. it has mild

smudging where a child lay down her candy bar

on a hot summer day; a few nail polish

spills enhance the hand-coloured

illustrations from A. Rackham, charmingly.

the spine has not cracked.  God knows why.

the dog held it in his mouth for five whole minutes

(after the chocolate bar fiasco) slightly foxed, it is.

dog spumed.  you won't mind, it's a rare edition.

grass stained, owner's former name in

Christmas inks, a bookplate with a mustachioed pirate.

a st. therese funeral card, bookmark-

the one with creamy roses in her arms,

tear creased;

in a former life, greatly loved, thumbed through

by small thumbs on finger-painting day at nursery school.

a magical screed. and glitter spattered that day we attempted

(for a school geography project), the glittering snows of 

Russia done, in papier mache and cerise towers.

bravely crayoned in.

once left under the redwood table, at the  beach, after hours

you'll hardly wonder at

the mild water damage, scent of summer rains, old ferns,

the tuna fish lunched wax paper scrap from a 

vanished picnic. tally, a

moon map scissored from the National Geographic

by my Grandfather.

a day that something wonderful was learned.

the once pink rose herein preserved.

the laundry ticket, included for free;

extravagant as Easter, one foil candy wrapper

smelling, faintly, of toffee.

coffee stains, no cream. no extra shipping;

dreams...

mary angela douglas 17 july 2014

Your Nose In A Book 0r: A Kingdom Far From Here

your nose is always in a book they sneer

in every language on earth; at you: 

who, long since have fled from them

each time you turn a page

into sunny fields, rose tinted mountains

like the Himalayas when everyone looks

up to see, suddenly, a sunset flush

from peak to peak simultaneously:

whole rose gardens- there, across the crevasse or you're on

the moors with guess who? Jane of

course; it's raining hard; she's drawn her

cloak about her; her bonnet, with its one small

rose is getting soggy; (a detail Charlotte left out,

but you've just snuggily supplied) then, she's at Thornfield

once again and Mrs. Faifax pours the tea (from the everyday

bone china)-and Jane doesn't take any cream, oh,

maybe, just a smidge- and a currant bun, perhaps

little cakes iced with pink?

no, you think, Mr. Rochester's

too cheap- (who assuredly knew she would refuse

those ruby scarabs from the Caribbean

and all that snowy Chinese jade), but you embroider

the point too finely, Charlotte complains.

and they draw near the fire and she's just

happy to be employed and hasn't even

seen Mr. Rochester yet- she thinks, and

so do you since you haven't gotten to that part...

oh couldn't they just have charlotte russe, just this

once, for Adele's sake? Charlotte laughs a little at

my joke and says not even a tiny ruche 

of cherry silk on that old bonnet...

"life is more than books,"

they yell and whirl you back from space and

Jules Verne, and off your stool, your rickety chair,

your divan with the stained glass afghan-

beginning to fray- as much as their nerves

but now they're on their prosaic way

to another part of the house, the factory,

the dim bulbed office-

and you're with Ray Bradbury and it's home to

Mars and someone's baking pies with perfect meringues

and Ray says let's go in, I'm hungry and they don't look

like Martians...the screen door creaks;

the lilacs blow against the palings-

have a slice, won't you? chocolate silk!

that suddenly you're skating on the Zuider Zee

in Christmas red, fresh roses in your cheeks

(to work off all that pie), you poor beleaguered thing

in real life, sprawled in roller rinks or holding onto

the rails- but now,

you sail across the winter ice

with secret gold in your heart and no sawdust

grind from the mills that turn for you each time

in a land so beautiful you almost feel sorry for them-

whenever they're left behind-

mary angela douglas 17 july 2014

To Valerie Macon, New Poet Laureate Of North Carolina Or: World Poetry In A Single Bound Vaults Over The Nitpickers

[to Valerie Macon, new poet laureate of North Carolina, "above the fray..." (July 12, 2014-July 17, 2014) a glorious though brief, reign...]

poetry appeared in the bark of old trees,

in the neighborhood you used to live in

springing up overnight, syringa in the moonlight

cloudy cloudy stars.

in the old rains,  intensifying the lilacs.

in the older lanes of perhaps, Fuquay-Varina.

in the little birds hopping near the mystical puddles

in the parking lots.

and "whishing" in the tails of the grey squirrels

and it was curled around the baby's finger

in the butterscotch sunlight and it never asked why, why

has no committee come to call on me

but burbled over the white stones in the creek,

the varicoloured,

in a wavery sound we knew was music laughing

and the angels, brookside laughing

fit-to-be-tied:

"what is protocol?

does it have wings, too?"

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Note on the Poem: people (some) are upset that the Governor of north carolina appointed the new poet laureate of North Carolina, skipping the normal protocol.  All I have to say is, thank God, since He's the source of it, anyway! (of poetry, not protocol)

On Break From The Offices

on break from the offices

before the weekend weddings of our friends

we halfway hid under the underpasses

of a cavernous place

from desert to desert

passing the time

no coffee. no dessert.

unless you think waiting is delicious and a treat.

even without cream, the skies.

discussing. making the time go by.

suddenly, I felt to leave as in a dream

or a movie you know

now's a good time for that.

too late, the armies with their new flash lights

showing off came running up and now it was night.

but as in the fairytale, the magic egg appeared.

though it was plain white, only a little oversized

I prayed in the name of Jesus, cracking it open:

inside, everythiing to make a world. all food stuffs,

notions.

a golden one I thought?

and then I woke up.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Note on the poem:  this is an exact retelling of a dream I had early evening July 15, 2014.

The only embellishment being the part about coffee and dessert and the creamless skies, about which there was no consciousness at all.

Everything else in the poem was in the dream, except that

when the armies with the flashlights came, I couldn't find room to say in the poem that they were scientists and not political, looking somehow happy and relieved to find us, and even more happy to find the enormous egg, or to find us finding it. It seemed to be simultaneous almost, the two events: their arrival and our finding the egg - but, a little off in synchronicity as it is in music sometimes when someone is new to practicing.

I forgot to say at the point they showed up I tried to wake myself up in the dream and thought I succeeded and then I thought, seeing them still there conversing among themselves, but you're not supposed to be here, anymore I'm awake...shortly after that I did awake for certain.  I have been reading Kazuo Ishiguro's  lovely book The Unconsoled all week with its spacious dream landscapes and irritations so maybe this was an influence.

The question of whether it was a golden or good world in the egg was something I wondered when I woke up thinking of the dream details. But the atmosphere of the dream was not negative just not something I wanted to be bothered with.

I wanted to rest.

Psalm For The Unsuccessful

even if you bind His hands and feet

and nail His forehead to the starry skies

you still won't own Him.

He still made the clouds, the suns, the ellipses

maybe you were over-proud to discover

one by one

through it took you centuries.

and is it an ivory word to say out loud-

a priceless one,

with a bounty on its head that

He still lives; abides your line of questioning

in the too brightly lit auditoriums

and where the velvet seat the velvet

ooing over the supermoons?

His torn angels smile, so used to it.

and in His green shadow of a shadow's fingertip

infinitely flourish

whole multitudes of those you fed a watery soup

ladling it out and with arched eyebrows

from the golden crockery you

had made for yourselves 

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Billy The Kid In A Sky Blue Kerchief

[on Mr. Perry Cordill's illuminating, "speaking" portrait
 of Billy the Kid]

Billy the Kid in a sky-blue kerchief, barely standing still against the skies under which he wandered; he wandered, wished the skies would open up; wished for

the angels on a black day, suddenly sunlit and is it sunlit in the

portrait, would you say? the eyes slit with a pale blue marksmanship; the diffident something besides a smile; the head aslant, unsure, under the porkpie hat of

the stranded Magi, what, you never heard of?

in an off gold shirt and open at the neck to the gallows?

for this year's pastel Christmas card, hand-painted.

oh paint, he seems to suggest if he had the nerve,

to the portrait-maker-

a stage coach one-way ticket

to a different homeland, maybe I'm the

orphan of too many destinations left to count

cut out of the picture book, a someone to save when

trying to reconstruct

lost prayers for all the outriders in the margins of

the unwept for (perhaps, not now):

American West

mary angela douglas 13 july 2014

Note on the poem: This painting "Billy the Kid" by Mr. Perry Cordill, a Sonoma County California artist can be found at
 www.perrycordill.com.  Just click on Wild West and it's the last painting.  And use zoom to magnify it if you wish.

There is such real intensity and feeling in the face.  It's simply incredible.  While you're there, you might want to look at the other portraits.  I especially love Annie Oakley against a prairie rose pink sky the color of a dress she might have wanted to wear but didn't get around to.  The freshness and the glory of a dream Wordworth said of his lost feeling for natural scenes.  The same phrase could be used to express the wonder of these American West portraits.

It's The Dark Geranium Skies That Make Me Weep

it's the dark geranium skies that make me weep

at least I tell myself that's true in a dream landscape

I'm unsettled

why aren't you?

or can't you find the vu-finder on the stereoscopic snows

the Christmas swaying through the ice storms where the angels chime

and round about the candles fly their semi-golden imitators or

I'm on the carousel of sighs and dropped the key you gave me

long ago and don't know where to live.

and yet, they let me through the gate assuming it can all be sorted out as if I were laundry,

later; when would that ever happen in a dream

mary angela douglas 13 july 2014

A Sparkling Ensued

[to my sister, Sharon,

and all her glistening music]

go deeper into the woods soothed my pages,

butterfly fluttering from the rose of peeling shelves.

and in no breeze at all,

a sparkling ensued.

a sparkling ensued and all the golden paths were opened;

though whether their gold was sunlit or was You, dear God,

could I even imagine.

it was You. and a sparkling ensued. and I went farther back

as though instructed, you know, to that part of the fairy tale

where all is about to go well if you will only listen.

you will only listen

and a glistening ensued.

and the woods were so much greener than we remembered:

in full summer, when we peeked through our fingers to see

falling snows and you felt like lace.

you felt like lace;

never losing your place in the story

once you'd begun, reminded someone dressed in lilac,

in a peaked hat, shimmering,

as I longed to be-

all alone on a nursery stage proclaiming:  I am the princess

who could not smile until my baby sister piped like

a silver bird crying, angela, don't cry!

anymore. anymore.

we'll go like the children hand in hand

through deeper woods than these

guarded by angels

where the roses foam in the moonlight

to the play house we know is there,

pink coated in candy sunlight

with a green awning.

then, the breeze is awake-

like it's Christmas day.

and we're the flower girls at the weddings

where Grandmother played Mendelsohnn

for all those brides.

or in pale Easter dresses

on the Other Side

in new bonnets with the sprigged cherries.

mary angela douglas 12 july 2014

Note on the poem: My sister is a pianist.

  I remember her playing Chopin for hours barely out of grade school, and the shimmering cascade of sound.  When we were younger in nursery school I gave a convincing performance of the fairytale "The Princess Who Never Smiled" and cried (like one of our dolls), real tears.  Alarmed, my little sister stood up from the crowd and comforted me.

My Grandmother was a piano teacher and an organist who played for the weddings of all her older pupils and others at our church.  My sister and I lamented we were only the "rice girls" when it was the custom, to throw rice at the weddings.We longed to be flower girls in long dresses, scattering the rose petals wildly.

We threw the rice very hard, however, in huge handfuls, so that the brides complained and then we were just free to enjoy the candied mints and nuts at the receptions.And the lime sherbet punch in the cut glass bowl.  I wish I had some now.

In my dream of Heaven in this poem I have changed us into the flower girls.  But the brides should have let us throw flowers instead of rice and then they wouldn't have had anything to worry about.

(We threw the rice hard because we thought it would bring them more luck.  I have no idea what put that into our heads.)

"pages" in the first line in the meaning of pages of a book and also in the meaning of "pages" from the King's court, messengers (in this case, of course, since we are speaking in fairytalese, they are winged messengers)

I Am The True Giselle She Said, She Did Not Say

[for Olga Spessivtsova-

and to all the Giselles, the Swan Queens,

transformed and transforming...]

I am the true Giselle she said; she did not say;

it was for someone else to say or not.

the swan transformed in the lakes of a living mirror:

meticulously pearled within or the wavering of what you

glimpsed underwater before you came up for air on

a summer's day, an opal breeze

when you are lost, in need of wings.

oh is it really true foreshadowing of the soul's eternal

freedom? their flight into lakes of light beyond the dress

circle. sparkling only for itself.  oh rise

en pointe, as if God lifted you, there and there: the rose,

the cloud, the pale blue intersections of

the far dimensions. forget yourself on cue;

you must or what is training for or life or anything

the handsewn sequined dress spinning out, centrifugal

petals on a flower whirled through opposing fronts:

hand layered with tulle and starlight and a sudden

vanishing

released from the jewel box stations of no cross

to the storm of music, the flaring of old griefs, illusions

set to music; the studied drift, the tips of satin shoes catch a gleam from somewhere else and are you

walking on Light as if you were jeweled

whisper her predecessors in every language

and are we somewhere else.

so that later, walking out from the theater

on legs like pins

like the fairy tale's mermaid for the

first time, on land

can you understand

when the mirror no longer clouds with your breath.

you're no longer recognizing

the metro stop across the streets

the little grocery with the red onions and

the newspapers-

in the after-mirage, still snowing, of the matinee-

in the trackless woods of

who you were and where

you meant to go

in the late afternoon

mary angela douglas 12 july 2014

Note on the poem: I only saw Olga Spessivtsova and heard her sorrowful, beautiful story through the dream-like, incredible documentary by Anton Dolin called A Portrait of Giselle which I saw on the A&E Channel (in 1988) when it was still about the Arts and not Law and Order repeats and I have merged these images with my childhood love of ballets and my later feeling, after seeing a Kirov Ballet matinee of Giselle in the early 90's at Kennedy Center when I walked past the yellow leafed early autumn trees and the roar of traffic by the Watergate still dazed by what I had seen and far removed from my surroundings.

The poem began today as I remembered the beautiful voice of the French ballerina Yvette Chauviré in the documentary,

recounting how someone had called her "The True Giselle".

Hymn To God By The Dimming Light Of Competition Still, Most Beautiful By Far

still, Most Beautiful, and star by star-

tomorrow they will bar Your sunsets from the competition

having been previously published

oh but not this one I cried the one of magenta fire

and not the ones before, before-

can't they see it's new, the paint's not dry your

 sorrowing angels cry

and mine in the lemon light cast they cast no shadows

in the tender grass and it's where we walked before

all this will pass and the angels and the angels pin blue ribbons

on all You have made 

and those who know You've already won will be gathered where

the beautiful is not weeded out of the garden

they pretend to own

who will not blow Your candles out

because You see in the dark

exactly where we are:

quenchless, Most Beautiful and star by star

mary angela douglas 10 july 2014

As If The Sun Had Words

[for Piper Laurie- 
in the alternate gardens of no cinema yet revealed-
on her irreplaceable voice and its musicality-
her incarnations spun of glass, substantially appearing,
irrevocably, memorable.]

a tone poem on her jewel-like trajectory in the film,
The Grass Harp...

it's not made of glass and yet it chimes

like the wind through old roses

in a garden from another time:

gardenia watered

through angelic rains- 

almost - of china - breakable-

ringed with the fanciful;

making the twilight hour

stand-  still-

ghost children, think so-

far away, wavering between Shine and shine

in the brocade of the prismed air

and down the bow of the night's proscenium where

the stars seem to have caught her light.

onstage, on the stage of verities,

simple as a valentine or not-

with scrolled handwriting

you thought you recognized?

was it a dream?

inscribed for someone else's life?

like the debut of flowers in each spring,

a freshness, with a difference -

a painting painted under the one we're used to;

the one we're unaccustomed to feeling, long out of view.

not now-

when suddenly the Soul

feels it was stashed in rooms with no other harps

through centuries:

contriving never to be smashed.

not that contemporary,

something harkens farther back

than anyone can remember rehearsing then:

her song, initialed with unaccountable jewels.

jewels on the surface of everything, 

she refracts without even intending to.

and is the world made of crystal, then,

sighed the children, wondering-

with an occasional orchid flare

going up,  from the otherwhere

and is it Christmas everywhere or

only where we are snowing?

where can the fountain flow for

such enchantments and can we go there,

please- and far from the broken things-

drenched in the borealis

up past bedtime-

or, is it, the lost languages of birds or

just her standing in a ray of light

filtering through the green-

about to speak

as if the sun had words

mary angela douglas 7 july 2014

Note on the poem: How can I explain the appearance of ghost children in the poem when I had nothing to do with it; they appeared of their own accord.  Perhaps, because we are all children before the true spectacle of the theatre, and ghostly in the sense that, caught up in the play, nothing else seems more real to us in that moment, enchanted by a voice as much and sometimes more than the story.

In the case of Piper Laurie I feel her voice and presence was far beyond the roles given her and could have glimmered more if given better writing.  Still, the jeweled light seeps through the almost closed door (I mean, in the lesser roles) - anyway.  God and the angels willed it so.

And I am speaking in the past tense but I wish I were speaking in the present and for the future as well.  Someone with these gifts deserves better vehicles all the days of her life on earth.

Always conveying a quality beyond the roles she is cast in that reaches all the way back to the highest aims and beginnings of world theatre, in my opinion.

Her most perfect performance I believe is
The Grass Harp, heart-breakingly exquisite and the one that inspired this poem.  

The poem reflects the roles I wish she had chosen or to be fair, I wish she were offered.  The kind of actress she would have been in a purer alternate reality and which, despite everything, she still projected, somehow. her voice and presence in itself has still to me those qualities the poem presents and it is a tragedy greater than the genre of tragedy that this did not come to pass, or only, rarely.  Perhaps she was born at the wrong time, being timeless.

Among those rare performances (rare in every sense)  I am looking forward to finding online or, otherwise, viewing her performance as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, as Auntie Em in Return to Oz and in the movie, The Promise which I have heard so many lovely things about. And I wish with all my heart I could have seen her onstage in The Glass Menagerie.

Happily, she is still doing work in the theatre, this summer in A Little Night Music.

I also cherish her performance in Inherit the Wind, with the magnificent actor George C. Scott, and her deeply complex portrayal in The Hustler although I hated that movie because evil certainly triumphed in it.

It is perhaps,important to notice that in the final image of the poem the (unconscious) expectation of the "children" watching her performance just before it begins is that of the children in Maeterlinck's Bluebird - that Light itself will begin to speak.  And it does.  And it has.  Thank you, Piper Laurie.