Non-Generic Valentine To Christ The Lord, Making No Name For Himself Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

sic transit gloria mundi

"And now thou art set wide ope', the spear's sad art
Lo! Hath unlocked thee at the very heart…"

Richard Crashaw I Am the Door


without a name unless a mocking one

on this green globe, my Mockingbird
t
they tore your paper heart in two


gathering accolades but not

for you: for you, the ones with the arrows piercing through

with a piercing that just wouldn't quit in the

valentine classrooms.


or before the Sanhedrin.

and shimmy shim shimmering at the Awards

the glitzy parties and the funerals

they've banished you from the cortege

without a nod from Personnel

or caterers who barely said, oh,

Chief among Mourners when will

mourning be done

they tore your paper heart in two

and beat you with the faery twigs you made

burst into light for Mary's delight

when you were cherry-caroled young

oh branch of utter loveliness my Knight

who gathered the stars armful by armful; the children, too-

thinking, now they will know what Beauty is.

but they kept crowning you with jokes,

strip tease routines

on late night TV or in the arenas

of the proud, the free

or in the high school hallways near the lockers

murmuring, anyone else here to cheer for

while in the shadows

You tore your paper soul in two

the one you made just for them

the one you labored over for so long, thinking,

now they will know what Love is.

red lily streaming on three hills and sparrow trimmed:

the glimmering triptych done.

now in the season of the witch

where no doves coo, I remember how

true love was reft with no rose red,

no violet blue:

the silhouette in a midnight garden before the Maligners

after the tip-off from a sweetheart sham.

and everywhere you are led away

sheer poetry is slammed-

while we bicker over our rights to the Runway

still gossiping in the continual rains

after your deluge-

and gambling for your Shoes.

and this is no song for the overcrowded stage

or thwarted kings still craving your Star-

but for those picking up their

soured-cherry game-pieces never

and managing to say between evictions:

from the Beginning, You and the light-drenched Aprile,

My Lord and my God.

or all these paper hearts will come apart

in these continual rains

on a day red carpets are stowed away

and the faux screens are shorn

of the stored up weeping they've retrained.

now is the green hour still vivid with starlight

and no heart's ease.

oh my Everlasting Meteor.

across my banished heart

your forever's still inscribed

beyond the sky where the barbed crows gather

in a stratosphere worn out with lies.

mary angela douglas february 10,11,14 2013