After The Firebirds Leave The Paintings Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

after the Firebirds leave the paintings
and you are on your own
may the ghost hearts and flowers rain down,
almost undecoded:
leaving mere rubies and emeralds behind
to mark their passage;
ah the tears, whispered someone extravagant;
you said: this exotic loss.

is it your Palekh loneliness, refined.
or is it the exalted solitude;
is that the mood through
the fairy tale woods
long disregarded?

when you only you
resume the path
and fit into your crystal shoe
the shadow tracks your
footprints made
on amethyst snows.

all this was long ago
and the sheen
of an antique brocade, ballet
unwound from a hidden spool,
Mary of all the opals shining
at the same time-

and of the lost plumage of the
red and gold.

mary angela douglas 29 may 2014; rev.12 june 2014

Note on the poem: The opening of this poem echoes another poem I wrote, 'After the Messengers Leave' and is a different exploration of the same initial emotion. Perhaps a period post-vision, post-annunciation when you are left with the emptiness of the angel-less air, or in the case of this poem, set in a Russian setting, a situation so dire or so remote, that the firebirds have migrated from the the palekh (fairytales) paintings. This poem also elusively, allusively refers to my feeling about Russian ballet, that feeling of ballet as holy and as being carefully passed down from one generation to the next irregardless of what is going on politically - this atmosphere. The reference to Mary, the Mother of Jesus occurred spontaneously, I don't know why except that in viewing certain Italian Paintings of the Virgin, or in reading the Liturgy of the Hours, I always long to find other names for her, names that would have been given to other paintings that would have been painted of her, names that might have been given to other canticles composed for her, they might have even been composed and that we have mysteriously lost, but in any case, in this poem have the luster of mother of pearl. And all the opals shining at the same time is the name I have given to the divine longing while on earth to experience your whole experience of beauty simultaneously something which I believe can be done only in a Heavenly afterlife but which makes a space in this poem for the person in a dire situation to contemplate this pearlescent, opalescent feeling and to live in it for the duration of the art work or for
the moment in which

the poem is read.