At The Installation: My First Impressions Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for Ilya Kabakov

perhaps you were tired of your museum going self

but you were never the type anyway

just wandering along the pavement

on a Saturday exploring the place

where the paper angels invisibly discerned

clung like starry moths trying to get in

you were one of them

still the child with the red velvet cape

off the beaten path

picking the papier mache flowers

everything was a costume drama back then

you tiptoe in.

someone has been here before me you marvel

there's the invisible porridge left steaming on

old tables

and there are newly erected fables

cubby hole apartments with little

stage dressing, just enough

dream perimeters established

museum perimeters have vanished

am I among the banished

you laugh to yourself, your toes in the brook

you become still

sensing the angels along the baseboards

in a twilight sketched out on graph paper

in curious notebooks

in conversations newly arrived from space

in light years retraced

in corridors of snow

all the escape routes open now

nothing to hinder you

no one will ever find you now

or inquire after you

you with your amethyst wishes still brand new

the Ideal patron, the beau geste

who also flew into the pictures

who also believes there is a fine line

drawn

painted with a child's watercolour box

dreamed before planned

planned before dreamed

so that in the mists you finally are

where prayers cannot reach the ceilings

but they have bypassed, surpassed the stars.

mary angela douglas 1 july 2023