Describing Your Disease Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

it's the way it's written on the evening air
that makes you stop until the people stare
around and through you:

you, with your shoelace half-untied;
your rich propensity for dreaming,
who notice every gleaming

from each cornice, seraphim
without, within the music's meaning.
lost in a twilight, loving these

they're certain you have some disease-
oh, let me name it for them
before they get to it, in a continual unease

with those who don't keep their heads down.
who neglect the shoehorn premises.
it's the disease of looking at clouds,

the rose turn of the light

the spiral of down, coming down
the aching brightness that weaves the trees
together in the orchard;

of seeking not to please the burnished
flocks hunched at the cafeteria tables back at school;
who'll look askance at you,

observing perfectly the Rule,

as they used to call it in the cloisters,
only I mean, the Rule of seeing Beauty
in everything

and of not being ashamed of it.

mary angela douglas 18 december 2015