To The Beautiful Kingdom Of Norway Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

and on an installation by the artist Ilya Kabakov, Where Is Our Place?



they'll bend down to see
as if to pray
it may be

the lily or the rose
invisibly wound
like a music box music

you'll begin to hear if you
are careful.

it seems so hidden, out of sight-
but it's just hidden in Easter grass-
glistening, multicolored always

waiting to be found

and it's a candlewick's wonder,
thread of delicate intent
that you can't follow, yet-

beyond the baseboard's curve or Hamelin's artisan
at floor level
the exhibit you waited all your life to see:

the one explaining everything so high
and yet, so low I see
a mirrored pond in lingering blues and greens

closer to Heaven, as you go
the very mirror's mirror on the shore-
the one you knew they'd leave behind-
edged in pink sapphires...

careless, cherished children

it may be hard to find the day before the day
before white flowers at the cathedral and
in between,

tears of the King and Queen
am I too small?
could I get in for free

midsommer's island's drifting out to sea
beyond the waves in the picture
you still might find the

children picking berries on the other side
of a small day with no candles in it yet
with smaller clouds floating by they

may not hear you they will find rest
in such a patch of shade:

fitted for a petal's scar
or to cirrus, lovely nothing at all
no longer wounded-

having found refuge under a rose leaf
rosebud stillness who could
understand...

a brief flash like crystal and a
splash 'oh no! ' you almost see
pure fairytale sorrow

stumbling past annulled in a pale
blue music fleeing

everything Large.

I've one doll slipper, satin-beaded,
left with a glittering shoelace broken
in trying to find the Museum with the

Giant's Installation: can you help me, please-
can clemency be granted to one
so small who can't find anything at all

among small flowers hidden in the grass
when words turn into stones
before the unbearable

I pray in a voice you will not hear but
you stare through in beautiful blindness

the keyhole, knothole to a deeper world
at rest
where gondolas drift always

upon the violet waters
under nectarine stars.

mary angela douglas 22 july-25 july 2011

Note on the poem: the origin of this poem is the tragedy in the summer of 2011 on the island of Utoya ain Tyrifijorden, Buskerud. That same day I had received in the mail a book of Ilya Kabakov's installation, Where Is Our Place? which impinged emotionally on the grief I felt for Norway over this event unfolding over several days as the coverage noted quite movingly the tears of the King and Queen of Norway which I also noted in my poem as a tribute.