The Dormition Poem by James Mullaney

A crack in that exquisite Virgin vase
A funereal shudder of taut strings
And Mary is gone. Quake ye angels' wings!
Your roaring rumbles Rome's basilicas
Beclouds the Arab's cunning algebras
And tolls the knell of everlasting things.
Lulling the infant Church a bald boy sings.
His voice foremuses dolce arias.
Abed and strewn with sprays of jasmine sleeps,
In drape, a sweet and saintly mother's heart.
Shall a kinder flower emblossom love?
Unveiled in mystics' cool and dewy deeps
Serene on a catafalque of verse art
The loveliness of Mary rests thereof.