for Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam
to the music of Messian’s Vingt Regards sur l’enfant-Jésus
I don’t know why white apples in the frost
seem suddenly to sob;
reading Mandelstam three in the morning,
I dreamt of God, His marred meridians and pearl
upwards where the gnats swirl angelically
lighter than the air they almost dwell in; alighting on
the purple lines dividing these geographies, my dusks,
may clouds float, swanlike then, bright dust,
in the ballet cirrus of Akhmatova
in an in-between time. I try to rhyme
Him with something else, deeply felt
but it’s too cold
where after decades throw an arced lights’ lost and emerald shine
as if they know
this Neva is not mine.
and who am I
to make my petitions here
on the other side of the world, the room, I fear
assorted people will not believe
I do love Russian poetry;
where the moon is made of glass.
will it shatter at last? will I
the milk bright pieces hold in a wounded perigee
I ask like a child from a hand towel embroidered
folk tale. not my own.
God knows I’m bound up in the story though
I won’t turn and become salt…if that’s your worry
“it’s not your past”, a thin murmuring grows,
how do you know I plead to no one heeding me
what words came to me in a midnight hour
and laid down their shields
or that the blanched petals fleet so lingeringly by me
on this heavy darkness, sown
as an antique honey, scarcely bottled.
I don’t know why
white apples in the frost…
made me cry unto the light vexed distances:
sheared seraphim may guard the long scars
lightly felt now, the buzz of
summer flies; soul freedom’s reedy tunes so
lemon starred.
no longer die. oh live jewel jangled as
Christmas hymns to the infant Jesus should be.
one candle grown lilac in a perpetual Spring
precariously I perch among worlds and
So.
they sigh, it’s you again and
won’t even let me in
for the dress ball, seemingly less than Cinderella,
packing one useless shoe
I’ll look within
wandering down Mandelstam Avenue,
a quarter note’s brimmed with wonders and
remote viewing as through a screen of ancient snows, all
things being foreign, suddenly parted
on a mysterious stage, oh Star, my star
where I, unaccountably, not knowing where You are
but in a blinding Grace
have all the parts by heart.
mary angela douglas 10 september 2016/3 january 2019; 24 june 2019
Leave a Reply