Tears Of Sleeping Birds Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

de lacrimis Christi

tears of sleeping birds this evening I heard
from the National Geographic blurb tears of sleeping birds
on rare occasions…

moths sip the tears of sleeping birds in Brazil.
do they get their fill I wondered of salt,
of the disappeared too early

it seemed so fairy tale real, disturbing
embroideries wrung from a fanciful tree
miraculously inferred subconsciously

the one gold leafed in an
unsettling country
milk and honey dried

where something dear has died
where coral moths are sought
and seldom caught sipping the

tears of sleeping birds

what do the birds dream then
that there is no more sorrow
in the world?

or the utmost burglary possible
has been sanctioned

the heart is a lake that rises
for the small bird fluttering in its sleep
incapable of the grief necessary

who will deliver me now
from the fugitive years ahead
where nothing more can be said

but "the tears of sleeping birds…

shall we quaff a thimblesworth
for everything on earth for
what remains in that refrain

that suddenly am I reminded of
like a safe broken into, with all the codes
of a trembling name or two

an exquisite residue
dewdrop poised on a branch
as if it were song

Nadezhda Mandelstam
speaking of herself and Akhmatova
after Osip had gone said,

in those days we had no tears left…
trembling over a handful of poems

the moths, drinking their tears.
the moths, drinking their tears.

mary angela douglas 24 january 2019