The Green The Leaf Reverts To When Earth Forgets April Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

'God's name like a huge bird flew out of my breast.
Before me the thick mists swarm;
Behind me, an empty cage.'
-Osip Mandelstam

for Nadezhda Mandelstam-
and for the history of Poetry

poetry is the rain returning to the clouds
when everything else has overflowed and there are no
more promontories or the green

the leaf reverts to when earth forgets april;
cast aside, still spinning gold-leafed out of
Time from the last tower- though

princes do not come this way anymore
nor merchants seeking roses for their daughters
after all ships fail.

wounded flowers instead of tears
should flow or the shadow of candles lengthen
to engulf the world or violet horizons crash

with their hour glasses
to the ground
like ribbons a child forgot in the grass

and I and I -it's no longer dew pearled,
is it? all they were born to say
from holy dread

churned into a thin butter,
begging bread.
I have locked my mind with a golden key

she said velvetly, turning away,
brocading the emptiness, while
song flew out his window into Space

and did not hear the
deliquescing angels breaking down;
snowing and

snowing on the healing waters
lifting into the clouds oh is it
forever or

only, year on year
that canyons gape,
losing their colours

do I only dream
or can it be?
the swish of rainbow roping
rains descending...
through the redacting languages,

begin, He said, the King of music:
again, from the beginning...

mary angela douglas 22 june 2014

Note on the poem: redacting in the sense of censoring or obscuring something; also euphoniously related to reducting or making smaller...