Flannery's Eyes
Words and Music by Terry Scott Taylor
©2018 Shape of Air Music
(To Flannery O’Connor)
The peacock roosts at dusk,
Gradual hops, and then
From ground to fence to limb
Now the shimmer and the shakes begin
In a vanity that ends
With the eyes of God watching you
The ancient design raised
A regal, ultimate array
In ecstasy’s display
Look, an ordinary face!
The same supernatural grace
And the eyes of God watching you
In the meantime the bull hides
In the shadows of the trees
He’s sent to gore your side
With the grace of your disease
The bull is charging now
He will thrust and open up your side
Embrace him as he violently abides
In a rosary of mystery inside the
Glint in Flannery’s eyes
Like the eyes of God watching you
With the black man’s suffering
(The peacock roosts at dusk)
She tattoos the South’s Christ-haunted
skin (Gradual hops and then)
She thrusts her peacock-feathered pen
(From ground to fence to limb)
To strike the bloody page again
(Now the shimmer and the shakes begin)
She saw this dying for our sin
In the eyes of God,
Wounded eyes of God,
In the eyes of God
Watching you…
