How Can They Speak At All Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

how can they speak at all?
distancing themselves from music
as they do?

my quarter notes spill all on the ground
in front of the before-school witnesses
like rubies from the wounded as they

are carried off-stage.
whole notes never found
the milk white maids betrayed

in the ancient songs.
'spoken in jeweled tones'
said they of cold renown

putting their two cents in

as if there were any language
left to them at all,
or should have been.

cheering their cheers to win.

the skies floated out
like a pale blue shawl.
I will count to ten and hide

as if I were a cloud at home
in the silken spooling distance
away from all this hurt;

my sapphires
summer rinsed.
hung out to dry and with

no recompense.
the song the Queen sang to herself;
the one you lent to her

before you thought better of it.

mary angela douglas 25 october 2015