The Names Of Things Spelled Into Her Hands (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

(for Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan...)

about this maybe it was said about poetry about rising to
consciousness
as being underwater and then at the surface gasping for air
so I will name the color of the rose the rose itself
one and the same so I will come to hold within my heart
the beautiful things the colors that they are their shadows
on the sundial
so I will learn the name of orange the color with it
flower and fruit together leaf and twig and branch
and all of it gold in the light and the light falls into my heart
like a wedding
and all the gold feelings become then a bouquet of gold, fusillades
of gold I remember later on when the light is honeycombed
and then I recall (as the narrator of this poem)
the taste of honey at childhood breakfasts
the wax of the honeycomb and I stood still when my grandmother
brushed my hair, or fixed my sash or when my grandfather untangled
the necklaces and then I knew this is all the Christmas my soul can stand
it is too beautiful all the colours and shapes the passing of music
into a room where she stands, dear Helen (who's speaking now)
straight into what I am singing I am singing of what is light years
away
the shadowed pearl of the skies
as I am light years away now from the naming of the rose from the...

water spilling spirographed
spelled into my
hands the telegraphic shock of it and the Living stream the knowledge
that fissures out of the
citrus darkness.

that orange is orange that love is love that God is everything I am
made to understand
as you spell into my hands the uprush of angels, the world lit up
from the inside all coloured lantern, the apple trees pale pink in
astonishing bloom and scent
and fragrant in glacial moonlight.

mary angela douglas 1 december 2021; 29 march 2023