And Ever The Chilled Sunshine In The Painting Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[on reading Edgar Allan Poe]

and ever the chilled sunshine in the painting;
the limpid discerning eye;
and doom is dusting the furniture

in the room that resembles a tomb.
what time the sandcastles bloomed
bathed in an unearthly pearl,

there seemed beauty's aura tinted there,
a serene behest and we, her guests.
but prescient page by page we

gradually guess and want to snap the book shut:
what has already crumbled
was a world,

the world to someone

who churns on in a spurned music
and who has no rest
canvassing us from a querulous distance:

with hidden outcomes
and the piano lid down.

we sense only (when we are in tune)
a melancholy happiness has passed
into us while we were tying our shoes,

adjusting a dress, and a lock springs open
near the kitchen cabinets and the coffee cake
for the far removals of a soul

we cannot laugh away;
the disappearing of the light of day
into something else, not night...

and this lament in a bottle will
never quite be stoppered
in a quaint antique shop

where daylight's people chattering
and lunching stop
to linger, fascinated

but must not linger long
where the heart is a miasma
and an unsettling song

you can't get out of your head
whenever
you stroll through rust coloured leaves=

and feel you can take your ease until it is too late
to see you were strolling
below an encroaching sea; a cloudy gate

that shouldn't have been left open.
the margins of battle, for a litte, fade;
the horses return to stall.

but the surrender,
if it is even made-
is not received at all-

and a worn voice cries: o
fasten my heart to sky
and let the lulling winter through

mary angela douglas 2 december 2015

P.S. Help. I have scared myself silly and must think of something cheerful quick. Please do the same yourself. In the second version I went back into the poem (bravely) and threw the coffee cake in and then dashed out the door. It's amazing what a little coffee cake can do.