Midnight Blue Tea Set From An Undetermined Dynasty Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

golden cranes weeping on a tea set of midnight blue
when weeping is flight away from and not to
and mother of pearl detail on a screen of dark
fantastic lament;
the selfsame century.
or maybe not. a silk-screened contract.
the poppy opulent fan.

what am I bid for the tea rose scents of a dilemma;
for the carnation silks of the trepidation when you watched at dawn
the auction of the bride cast down by the casters
and forecasters; it's the bride cut out from the
seed pearl morning by a child: the seed pearl morning
and the poem
of the far-off intuited disaster.

it's the lift of the golden cranes forever
from a field of midnight blue on the trace of
the day you were born for;
and oh it's mine, it's mine, the repudiating star-
what am I bid.

and who will pour tea now for the ceremony
coming down around your head, your head
with its pearl thoughts braided and burnished
and burnished and banished
from an ancient village that can't welcome you

when you catch your golden breath instead
of the hem brocaded on the terraces of grief.
your golden breath that was always going to be
going from not to
that was going to beat against the midnight blue
against the midnight blue and win-
and the seed pearl illusions' shattering

someone
else, instead, from an indeterminate dynasty.
and fortune is yours still and the carrying case;

the mirror with its opal backed splendor'
the soul in its mother of pearl intractability
of intricate detail
and the auction is not through-
it's not through yet and yet you are living

and in a little while the bidding will finish.
the bidding will finish on a fairer isle than this.

mary angela douglas 13 april 2014