In A Prelude Indicating The Whole Ballet Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

dedicated with great respect and admiration and in all their generations to Maxim D. and Karen Lasser Shrayer...



beautiful, on the lake of my dreams float the swans

innumerably

in a light that is hushed and jeweled:

crystal precipitate!

in a prelude that indicates the whole ballet

I too that is my soul each night would alight

or on enameled afternoons, flashpoints of Beauty,

to thread through death the ferrier warnings in even one

shimmering thread;

to perfect such floating seclusion

whatever epoch we are stranded in.

how can there be sin

in a world where the swan appears, the swans

as from Tuonela or Hans Andersen, Pavlova,

mythically, waiting for the great bells to ring

out of their legends into our entranced hearing,

seeing, feeling.

I too have sounded my griefs in the foreign ballets

awash in wonder beyond all fearing,

beyond any country known or unknown

and where will I come home

to say whatever it means

this fine iridescence, this pearled thunder

mirage forever pealing wherever seen

in the hall of memories or of dreams, in the public garden

for a day tripped Space

or in all of Art if only to pray

in the merest trace upon strange waters:

now you will drift

after long tribulations. sifting the mysterious.

and in the plumage of the freed.

mary angela douglas 30 august 2022