Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Angel Bones from Endpoint and other poems
Next to the statue-laden cathedral of Reims,
the bishop’s palace has become a museum
containing many stones cast down by wear,
bombardardment, renovation, and the rare
too-thunderous Te Deum.
Huge saints and angels, retired from the weather,
stand tall above us. Their visages were carved
to show a soul-a face of grace above the wars,
the plagues, the congregational stench of masses-
to worshippers they dwarfed.
Now chips and missing chunks give proof these hulks
on loan from Heaven fell prey to earthly harm,
for limestone, soft to sculpt, breaks easily.
Look here!-a sheared and fractured flank reveals
a tiny shell, distinct, intact,
from vanished, darkling, long pre-Christian seas,
The pious masses, milling underneath
and looking up to holy largeness, lacked
the science to deduce from this small clue
what mighty absence it might mean.
posted by DH
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