I Read Of A Book On The History Of Glass Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I Read Of A Book On The History Of Glass

I read of a book on the history of glass

in the National Museum of Ireland

and I thought on a cloud drifting day

with the rains not that far away in Carolina,

I thought, all that has passed

my thinking on the destiny of glass

and high Irish song.

yet still from the aeons where I belonged

a faint stirring rises like the wind,

signaling a storm

the kind that clears the air for clear eyed speech

or shatters it all

and angels beseeching

the beautiful, the faltering airs behold them fallen where

I could not reach

and all was lost from each to each

in a thuderclap morning.

what matters now in the aftermirage

green island and fair where I never was yet wanted to be

I never went to the National Museum of Ireland.

but something in me seems a part of that

and I feel that this is so through the little else I know

through the door that has no key

they will come back to me, in the rounding of the hour

the wounds that have staying power-

and become the sea.

mary angela douglas 17 august 2019