I Dreamed In The Sea Of The Children Of Lir Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I dreamed in the sea of the Children of Lir
coming through the mists of their childhood
unrecognizably

oh beyond reach
let words be fought for but
what am I supposed to say

when saints have courted endlessly
the hard and diamond edge of
your impossible retrieval?

when are you coming home
o vivid heart eluding
bereavement, banished wing-
are you carving the thick tiered

wedding cake mists as if they
belonged to you?
when will you find rest

beating the crystal air to a
fine snow over centuries;
are you very nearly free

or do you dream your muted
carillons below
have all passed on?

it is a real question.
are you?
stay alive can you

be carried sleeping into
deeper exiles over
God's bright shoulder?

it is a real question are you
finding no more countries left
for you

on earth...

I lived as some suggested
sending golden transcripts off
somewhere into space

from brilliant institutions no one ever heard of
and the envelope sealed with evensong and
all the mauve distances dissolving...

are you the one
bargained over at sales
not open to the general public-

subject to steering committees
charged
with capturing the data?

let us return, unopened,
frailer than snow and so unchartered
to live in Danish stories, after all-

dreaming of journeys
over long waters
looking at light

through the spent leaf
and the mottled cloud
as if at a kingdom
somehow lost to me

still still my own

prospective student,
employee, friend,
any person at all:

launched to the unfairytale-like
docket with a
mirage-like defense

jump over the railing!

there's no qualifying ground
for one so fey and the wild swans must
move through
the lilac foaming of their weariness.

it is also true
the glimmer of your sunset mind
is a sheen of no use to them at all

and will count against you at the agencies
more than the questions you leave

blank
when you're combing the waves
oh not

for 3 good references and a jacket
they can believe in.

then you'll descend, dear
Christmas-bright contestant, saint
like the exemplary

Children of Lir with your
one cloud-sleeve unfinished
down to the violet waterline at last:

caught up by sudden angels on command-
recommended by the wounded Trinity-

weeping poems and
the clear bells
of little stars

mary angela douglas 16 august,14 august,20 july 2011