After The Russian Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

black snow descended in Malevich square

that was when I turned the corner

and then another, edged in the raveling of lace


it's late my mother it's unearthly

we ate pears at Christmas in the matchstick flare

I dreamed up in a dream when we were almost


beyond compare; compere,

folkloric embroidered with the memory of snow

soon the harvests won't come


drum circles will emerge

but all I heard

was nothing compared


with Shoshtakovich.

violins weeping the black snows.

it's the absence of light


that will not count as a country in Heaven

no matter how hard they try

to stop the swallows


when they fly with a single crumbling edict

to carry poetry into a furnace

and the furnace never dies


and black snow is descending

violas atthe end, the last jette

why pretend otherwise


you could really forget


why look at spires through a mist

and imagine this as

a fairy tale


milk white; prescient with opals

I was in an orchard of whys

and no one could fell me.


mary angela douglas 7 april 2019