To The Keepers Of The True, The Good, And The Beautiful In A Cynical Time Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

For Ray Bradbury

For Dr. Louis Markos

For Sam Weller


they will not believe your reports

on the ghosts of things seen and unseen

the apple tree traceries, lost to Eden

the Stone's Sword Wielded

the beautiful ghosts, the ones in every colour

that come while frying up bacon or knitting the

day that was raveled in two to the least of you back

together again in every mystical

shade of wool, you wool gatherer you, they mock

you are the mender of words said and unsaid the winder of

the Clock of wonders:

the fragrance and the thunders

of beautiful intrepid, wept for fought for overwrought

imagination

wrought of the Saints irrevocable way the light and dark of

every May to December

Remember! the wild ghosts say; remembered! you whisper

and file it away in the curio

cabinet of the far constellations

this cannot be the disbelievers will cry they will lie

and gainsay

and shut the golden book in every nation

and every snapshot that you took in the summers of let's

pretend, the Pandora box lid

but God will have something to say at last

of all your chronicles of His past, His futures, too

and ring the final years in, the glorias extant

that cannot be dispelled

by envious men.

mary angela douglas 30 september 2021