If An Angel Came Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for Harold Bloom


if an angel came

came to the door and wept

keening the disappearing

of the lovely bequeathed


with a look less blazing

and in a haze of sorrow

why wouldn't it be believed


what we have seen, I have seen

the poets relegated to the ash heap

who might as well have been the ones


to invent the lyre;

to such an extent

the heart is misrepresented now


and their date is expired

it is generally understood.

by those lost deeper into Dante's wood


but in my heart a rebel notion rises

I am not loth to express


and you can take the rest

of the dystopian martyrs the ones

who stress less is more when it is only less


because perhaps I am sorry to say

they are just not up to the task themselves



yet still I will bless Shakespeare

Keats, Yeats, Rilke and all the rest I learned

in green years past;


that is the Heaven I would live in

unsurpassed where words strike sparks

and there is life enobled, unbidden


to defend itself established in the Living Word


unwilling to leave Paradise even if the herd requires it

refusing to go, preparing in all I know to stand forever so,

forever toward Eden gazing.


mary angela douglas 15 november 2019