They Are Not Going To Understand Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

they are not going to understand except for the pottery

the ruins the way that you do, only caring for the glaze,

future historians, documenting what was your former

life on earth

the rings on your tree of life, the unspeakable winters

and counting the various strata color coded to match

as though in fashion

each subsequent era

how will they measure the inner devastations

only the singed fragments of the poets

who perished too in their singing

portends. engraved on the fallen pillars.

or on the amber of the wind;

the lilies of the valley peeping through the rubble of

all the old accretions so long so long

past their inner twilights,

the so called historical griefs

that sundered us, for a while

from ourselves.

mary angela douglas 16 january 2023