To The Unknown Poets, In Their Anguish Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

if they do not say your poem is beautiful

how do you know that wounded birds

do not come to the quiet pools and drink

that what you think indifferent silence is the breathing of

comets

forgotten winds gathering speed and that those winds

will lift the sail of everyone that grieves

it is a flower opening in a desert, your poem

and at its heart the last known drop of dew

think this.

whenever they grieve you. whenever they are remiss

so that the golden ball falls down the fairy tale well

and seems irretrievable when

they say nothing, nothing at all.

mary angela douglas 8 july 2021