Sonnet

you have lipstick on your collar I say to my father the priest that’s just the Blood of   Christ my son he replies by and by (the milky thigh of   Mary in my mind) William Blake’s eyes aligning in the snow a statue outside London simply called “The Heretic” where birds sit and shit and live out their days in unconscious praise of that third space between language and the mute object as sunlight pours through the stained glass at the Lincoln Park Zoo where I saw the lions pacing and you told me to always remember that the cage is for the protection of   the captor