Lives Of The Hunger Artists: A Meditation On Franz Kafka's Story (A Hunger Artist) And The Lament Of Christ Over Jerusalem (Matthew 23: 37) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

for all the artists in every medium who have ever suffered on this earth, in gratitude for them all.
The artists, the poets, the writers, the musicians, the playwrights, the composers, the sculptors, the actors, the filmmakers, the saints of God
['This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me'
-Emily Dickinson

'O Jerusalem, stoning the prophets,
how often I would have gathered...'
Jesus Christ

'This living hand, warm and capable'
-John Keats
========================================
I am sending you a last letter:
written on snow
by moonlight.

you do not answer
when I ask:
you do not

honor what I honor.

you leave thorns
instead of roses
thinking yourself a
charitable person

a connoisseur of criticism
a superb translator
biographer extraordinaire
editor, publisher

so savoir faire
you let me starve;
then you expect a feast.
you leave me friendless

then demean my friendlessness to others.
and let me freeze
asking

'why is he/she shaking? '

I am writing this letter
like a bloodless revolution
like a smile, - a simile-
broken in two
by those who abandon with
no conscience
what others died for-

chasing all evictions down
rushing in to steal
whatever's left behind they can
carry off in truckloads

after I'm dead you'll build an

edifice of Criticism
and furnish it like Versailles;
you will live comfortably

pilfering old letters

first drafts scouring
earliest sketchbooks like
kitchenware

munching on the windfall apples

of ghost-written libels
so

here is your fair copy
with no envelope
like a night with no stars
a summer with no breeze
a Heaven with no God-

a gallery with no paintings O

Jerusalem, stoning and stoning
what you'll never understand
yet God Himself is
with me, His starry
hand on my right shoulder:
writing with me in invisible ink

this winter telegram to you O
Jerusalem I only wanted to
tell you how beautiful it could be-
to live

mary angela douglas 10 december 2009; 30 september 2023