Any Heart Breaking Over The World Is Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to the once and shining, Russia-
0n Vladimir Ashkenazy's beautiful interpretation of Prokofiev's Cinderella...


any heart breaking over the world is
breaking off in mid-sentence
still, I believe in words:

in music tuned from words
in words inlaid in music
emerging with farthest meanings;

reduced to no one's ashes.

don't chronicle what no one
can endure, we'll be our own
country - after all - and

I will embroider former themes
while the birds come back
to the right trees

and lachrymose clouds are scattered
in cross-stitch across
a silver-threaded moon

or just lie down in a simple field
to speak my sonnets to an ear of corn
but my secrets reach the ear of the king

and life shears off
again with little warning...

yet-
my fairytale's not wound
on that spool forever,
I say

surveying the star-flecked tulle
in the closet
or the watered silks packed away

in too-opalescent legends of
the snow child's disappearance:
defending to the end

her hand-stitched manuscripts,
oh firebird lamentations, you know that I am.
there's poetry behind the lines

no matter what they say at Court;
we'll ford the invisible moat
in spite of the neighbors' opinions

and rescue everyone we knew
with songs and marzipan-

or like the children
in The Bluebird, taken in hand
by Light itself

retrace the inner light
of things unbroken even when
the birds fly off

in every wrong direction, not one of them blue,
viridescent in the glittering distance too long
eluding you

but never-mind the static
of world-wide emptiness,
your message is received

and we're illumined on the frozen stage
through your lucent pink filter

awakening
our sleeping castle-kingdoms:
it's the joy of many angels.

you're learning to live a very long time
and the chiming air around you feels so free;
catching the silver sounds before they fall,
bright golden pears, unbruised.

catch yourself before the notes snap off, unlistened to
but here they are, glistening

all for you and the ticking clock
breaks open spilling over
in lored, jeweled singing

still.


the air is awash with golden sparkles
the fleur-de-lis stars arise
seen for certain through the azure mists
and I sense her sky-blue scene

is coming...

smoothing her rose-trimmed skirts
on an improvised stair and

humming her belle epochal tune;
packing up apple blossom drifts
and tiny acorn dishes

for the Queen of Moss and
nothing this brilliant could ever be lost
on the Faberged wind

when the crystalized waltz begins again

for Our Lady of Infinite Glass-

mary angela douglas 9 june 2009