On The Removal Of Certain Statues Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

the ghosts of former statues drift

through public squares

unmoored we are, they wail

as if they could

twice dead and solid as moonlight.now;

once we gleamed near shade trees

sentinels of grief

to those who raised us

now are we razed

we who never dreamed but were

immemorial, so were we deemed once?

engraved, and left there, weathered, weathered

eating the air of time for lost sons remembered

and home shattered, shuttered, never to be repaired

lost mirrors now

of the, - the ships that reached port

too early. of the untimely frost

of the absurd cause ruined nd ruinous

dragged from our perch

and assailed, war criminals

rocks on trial

though we have shed no blood nor drawn it

where will the ghosts of war go now

we are banished from city and town

the widowed brides long past

of those whose line died out for nothing

we cannot ask, being but that

shadow of stone.

sentinels now of a grief expressed nowhere

because we were on the wrong side of

the question we never understood

for those whose farms burned down

or would have had they not stood in the breach

and we would weep if we could

slow tears of stone

but we have grown wings in a manner of speaking

scrawled over and stained as though we could be shamed

and from our exile dreamed did we? that

gone are the trumpets from our marble hands

the horses from under us so are we punished

who never drew breath

all snowy sunsets down!

but wished we could day after speechless day

unmoving in the college quadrangles

we might have stood in, being the semblance of men

for those who rode death down and drowned

for no resounding glory.the phantom son of their old age...

ghosts of ghosts are we

in perpetuity

now they have come symbolically to say

we must wrong the wronging brother his last image

that canceled equation of the brother against brother

the space at the supper table new defiled

a puzzlement before God.

and ever, the unwreathed tomb.

the marble mistaken child.defaced,

erased now.

mary angela douglas 17 may 2018