Stringing My Illiterate Lyre Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

stringing my
illiterate lyre
I shriek bird cries
within the morning-

fragile flutter
at my ribcage
flights of an austere passion-
breaking for the Sun

when you go
past the Madonna
marble shatters:
complicating moonlight

in your mind

oh bruise the
denying rituals;
cry bright ascent
in darkness:

Christ broke his body
on the sun

where Beauty breaks the prisons of our sleep

mary angela douglas 12 september 1970
Fontbonne College, St. Louis, Missouri