In The Fifth Year Of My Unemployment Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I am the stranger at my own gates-
less than rationed
they have torn the wings
off the angels of my countries,
rivers, suns-

and the dogs with their eyes
like saucers in a tinderbox story*

are staring me down:
guarding a treasure sifting into dust;
as I'm turned back from

appalling interviews
and the false floor falls through falls through

falls through

but I remember the rose windows
of the great cathedrals
and whisper the cadence of roses, themselves

like the names of Russian poets.
Mandelstam. Akhmatova. Pasternak.

let me cling like a saint to their iconostatic wind...

through an ageless winter the red berries
shown above the snow-shrouds

and the poems were bleeding-
in full view of everyone

this precisely crimson shade

mary angela douglas 24 september 2010

*ref. to Hans Christian Anderson's fairytale: 'The Tinderbox'