(elegy for Martin)
I thought that words had come, once, unexpectedly to mind
or did I imagine that time
drifting through Northern regions, dream words, worlds
whirled up the colours of the sun, setting or rising?
freezing the dun
and dismal and shone the harbours the barges
moving slow and the tides so full of silver
star showers swept and then the long sleep.
and poetry for awhile came back to herself
amid the ballets splintered in two, the Romantics
disabused of their romanticism
and the gleams furtive, fugitive in darkness
then Ghent in sharp relief on a map of dream
and it is dawn in June or a
weathered inwardness recalled like Rilke at Duino:
the deep starred not the warring scars, the soaring!
the angels, heavy with song in the evening dews
and the ancient anchors lifted...and something
said, Come Through, now it is time and time itself wept
time swept and the angels poured through
all silver mouthed and lilting was Limerick was Brugge
for awhile, Blake's London, America reconstrued
and a theater of golden Kings in translation
as far as India, Algiers
recalling Yeats. the Celtic twilight reemerging,
forged anew or the start, at least made
and the flowers of rue and Kari and Gilberte
and Bruegel's parades
and the broken ships healed, departing, the poet's friends
no elegies he cried, no end in view and turned away
and the friends of friends and the poets know
and say, or do not say
what it is they know about this, each one
and Marie-Anne, muse of
the honeycombed summers and Crete
and a white and gold sleep assuming, ascending
transcending the blues of their half etched radiances
the infinite, the beautiful seclusions, equations
and the many-storied no conclusions
I dreamed this so it seemed that it came true
till through an open window came the stunned Graces,
with the news shunning the glorias
and Chaos with a ring of stone exchanged.
a blank page with the ghosts intact
half murmuring back to back, the King is dead
the Queen in mourning
the Court askew, the play in ruins
so that words are veiled and drift like snows no longer eluded,
the fait accompli, the prognosis, Father, it is finished
Chopin's last etudes falling through
between centuries, constellations, coteries conscious only how
tha poets come and go rarely (the ones of jeweled rarity excepted) with such intensity, tenacity, integrity
bleeding a meaning whiter brighter than snows
amid such lucidities,arabesques, agonies...
Light God said let this be and it was
Whitman then, intoned, lilac, I bring you my sprig of lilac,
Odysseus or Icarus, home and the weave that binds us
the Alpha and Omega strung like summer beads with joy!
teardrops of joy!
Penelope weaving and reweaving the mariner home
these songs remain.
when April trees
petaled the bright avenues amid the unknowable scenes
on such a mysterious breeze from
the last half coded plays, the players disbanded
in disbelief, new works he had said, forthcoming! the
lovesongs of
Jason Flanders, an opera on Oppenheimer, a cantata.....
the solstice journals closed.
unleaved the tree of Language fresh widowed.
not knowing how to grieve
will the waters no longer flow
murmured Marie-Anne near the shoals
seeking a sign this is not so
the cathedrals heaved and I lost
for awhile the music of clouds
the vagrant heart obscured
no longer telegraphing,
I am. are you?
you are, we are through all these declensions
silently, sharply, suddenly pierced with rue
for Martin, for Bruges. for Marie-Anne
in Melle, their Melle, the colour of honey.
Eternal Aprils, Marie-Anne, the outposts!
whispered Martin on the strand
you haven't far to go she heard in the snows an
elegant rustling laughter theaded through tears
in the snowing of the years
or could she hear...Atlantis in every shell.
the trees, look at the trees weeping flowers
the daylight children sang
little choruses of stars, bring her wreaths of wildflowers
and the mariner rescued at sea
their favorite story ever.they believed
they believed
and Orion glows over Ireland, Brugge, and Crete
for the departing soul
and God receives what man conceives
that tenderly, to us, imperceptibly
the dream words tumbling in all their colours
dimension to dimension, enthralling, calling elsewhere home
where there are no dissensions, shores
reports to Greco anymore
and the stars are closer viewed through that Arch
where all explorers long to go, yet dread,still in love with Earth,
lingering in cobbled streets becoming himself again and again
blending in (she feels it so) each evening in
the migrations of the swallows, lapwings through their
wheeling and wheeling and turning back, Eurydice.
to the harplike trees abandoned or abandoning,
turning back once more to view
the laughter and the pain threading through
a green door, Ghent, Galway in review...and Beauty
beauty strewn everywhere.
and it is Spring and the petals raining down
these petals compose
in their shattering some April sound,blossoming,
into pages of a manuscript Unbound.tuned impeccably
the man, the friend you knew or dreamed you did...
for a span, there was this music
and the lyre renewed.
mary angela douglas 21 december=. 22 december 2017;9 july 2022
9 july 2022 added phrase after many storied: 'no conclusions" On this day I also realized I spelled Bruges incorrectly.
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