Ruby Throated Christmas At The Last (Reformatted Stanzas, Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

(to William Butler Yeats wherein I imagine the poet's last Christmas)

the sands run down your ruby-throated hour glass
and up and down the scales of words that
can't sit still, you sing:

the dulcet chords still stringed; prolonged,
the glass bells chiming in the Christmas air
though for not much longer

will the angels gather, as they did long ago
above the children, anxious to go home
and break the silver envelope of pain
surrounding the outer atmospheres again
and smash the harps of stone
and pluck the silver from the moon.

bright poets, the brightest in the room
how empty, empty is the loom
how we've forgotten all that sings,
that sang oh, all that about the human

child exiting human mischance
in a fleeting dance and through
a faerie entreaty and it seeming plausible.

suddenly, in a tower's room
you'd start to hum a tune you
thought you never knew before
with the cabinet crystal shining.
conspirational. and more,

the violet figure at the door
of Radiance returned.

mary angela douglas 21 november 2013; 13 january 2016; 19 october 2023