The Wind Through The Roses Is Harplike Still Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to Mary O'Hara, premier Irish singer and harpist-
this lament for banished Song]

the wind through the roses is harplike still
though you will not credit it, I know,
dire modernists.

the moon through the slit of clouds

causes them to glow as the soul must,
through the body; this alters not.
but for you, for you- bright words are

caught in your net of subterfuge
the one for which you will become famous
and you would bury them.

and you pretend, and tell all men

these images are rust and you pursue
the reasons why
we see colours, breaking it all down

for us.

but the wind through the roses is harplike still.
the harpers return to the ruined villages
where people make out their wills

yet have nothing to pass on by way of song.
yet we will gather pearl like from the great distances
wildflowers drenched with inordinate dews,

we who recall all the tunes

and the jeweled stars in their ellipses
patient in their sparkling, disregarded.
by what laws and byways have you come

to crate the beautiful and bolt it down
where children can never find it again!
and mine the language, keeping the husk

thowing the emeralds
like discus far from the Mays
while you tote it all up:

what's to go, what's to stay.

you would wrest Heaven from God if you could.
and make little subdivisions out of it.

mary angela douglas 30 march 2016