Requiem

If angels were made of music,
                                         surely they would vanish.
              They would leave their symmetries
                            the way words leave
                                                        a pyre of books.
              Or gods leave by candlelight
              the damned, if
                            their angels are tiny, more afraid.
                            If they cut their robes to shreds
              or pour their sacks of teeth
                            into shapes our bodies give them.
              Mouths empty and fill and empty
                            like trains
                            among the lions of the colonnades.
                            If they were us,
              they would say go back,
                                         and call it progress.

              *