Into The Booklands (Or Something Lilacs Said) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

to Ray Bradbury


into the Booklands with the ravaging words
with the green net or the silver
to draw in the stars, rosebuds, occasional herds:


the myth of where you are whoever heard of
why Im into the Booklands you say
while they stare after you


until the undergrowth passes away
you are not passed away
you are There, with lilies in your hands


issuing no commands that you be set in amber
and Where keeps bursting into a gold leafed aspiring
here the ferns sing ferny songs to

you with your nets your lack of cunning
you just keep on running
into the rose of it, roseate;

the dewiness
the sad flow not my tears fountaining,
the waterfalls entre onto the crystalline down to the

wallpapers on the walls, rooms with small keys to the
corridors; the, if you please, where the knights shine
(why don't you?) looking for what declined

help yourself to pie, the reasons why
the storied stories glorias of it all, skittering,
mousey velvet whispering

the tendrils
nestling the mole holes in the tall grasses
where the otter knows

you fall into a realm of saints
where you become small
your shadow looms larger...

they pass like barges by you
on the river of dreaming
in the business baroque of seeming where lost bridges span

but you, you are the gleaming now
who could turn you back
the bookmarks melt away,

why save the place when you're in it every day
or even farther away
you're in the snow drifts, Swan

or dressed in cherry velvet, on and on
with the applesauce cow;

in mint condition
with no audition
in the glazing, glitzing winds

the curlicues in winter glass surpassing
the fairy tale of the let's not even ask
(them for directions)

to God and to no doom
and the lets pretends, the late parades
forever in bloom.

mary angela douglas 6 march 2019