[for Daphne Du Maurier, on the novel, the film, Rebecca…]
I dreamed of Manderley last night
wrote the second Mrs. De Winter, years after
her coronation, still fresh in mind
it was a dream but even so
it was not the same in Time as dreams refracted it, there,
as the rusted gates close on us all,
don’t they, drifting back, even in dreams
the dream gates waver.
but she went back to Manderley it seems,
seeking to savor it again;
seeking a gleam of what remained,
remains for the fragmented mind
puzzling it again.
in beautiful sentences wrote Du Maurier
the most beautiful of any I have heard
in noveldom turning the page on beauty,
to peruse it, farther on.
and at the beginning of the book
she said this, beginning a dream alphabet,
language of her own. dream language dreamed
not saving the best wine for last.
ah unsurpassed I dreamed of Manderley
last night I dreamed…
I dreamed and dreamed over just those
lines such a voice over of angels
on a familiar narration oh not really my own
your own though it sounds like you speaking it:
you, farther back the angels graciously suggest
and you are all alone now
wither shall I roam and find the dream-time home
and even yet, you dream of Manderley
your own version of it
and shadows and shadows
on the long avenues
cast by the fitful trees wind-torn
as the heart remembering;
lining the roads, the trees and their reveries
that won’t that can’t anymore
lead home.
mary angela douglas 5 june 2015 rev.22 may 2017
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