It Takes A Day To Arrange The Flowers Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for Virginia Woolf



it takes a day to arrange the flowers
to greet old friends by an Aeschylean sea
to walk through Kew Gardens and certain museums
to hear the birds singing Greek in the trees
to leave behind a jeweled language
novels with grace notes in scores of dream
and infinitely lucid and lucent essays
and then incomprehensibly
to be branded as such the venting suffragette
by people who murmur fictitiously
surely oh surely they know what you meant
surely's the crowning irony.
to look in the glass past the drone of war
and then to wonder how many more days, weeks. years
before they conquer all of us here and
hunting your beloved

to sing no more.
to greet your ghosts by an Aeschylean shore
and leave your beloved
that he might flee.
eluding horrific captivity.

to arrange the flowers in the vase of the sky
to arrange the flowers in the vase of the sky
to walk into waters and on your own
your heart and your pockets laden with stones
to save your beloved that he might flee

your Jewish beloved if need be
that you may not an encumbrance be
if the war failed and he had to flee
your life for his you meant it to be,
Virginia.
and where is condemnation.
where is emboldened misinterpretation.

mary angela douglas 23 april 2023