I Dreamed Of Manderley Last Night (Second Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[for Daphne Du Maurier, on the novel, the film, Rebecca...]


I dreamed of Manderley last night

wrote the second Mrs. De Winter, years after

her coronation, still fresh in mind


it was a dream but even so

it was not the same in Time as dreams refracted it, there,

as the rusted gates close on us all,


don't they, drifting back, even in dreams


the dream gates waver.


but she went back to Manderley it seems,

seeking to savor it again;

seeking a gleam of what remained,


remains for the fragmented mind

puzzling it again.


in beautiful sentences wrote Du Maurier


the most beautiful of any I have heard

in noveldom turning the page on beauty,

to peruse it, farther on.


and at the beginning of the book

she said this, beginning a dream alphabet,

language of her own. dream language dreamed


not saving the best wine for last.

ah unsurpassed I dreamed of Manderley

last night I dreamed...


I dreamed and dreamed over just those

lines such a voice over of angels

on a familiar narration oh not really my own


your own though it sounds like you speaking it:

you, farther back the angels graciously suggest


and you are all alone now

wither shall I roam and find the dream-time home

and even yet, you dream of Manderley

your own version of it


and shadows and shadows

on the long avenues

cast by the fitful trees wind-torn


as the heart remembering;


lining the roads, the trees and their reveries

that won't that can't anymore

lead home.


mary angela douglas 5 june 2015 rev.22 may 2017