The Grief of Angels

- after “The Fall of the Rebel Angels,” 
Peter Breughel the Elder, 1562
and “The Lamentation of Christ,” 
Giotto, 1305

Sprouting gills and lizards’ tails, rebel angels 
change in their fall from the shining walls of heaven— 
becoming horned and feathered beasts, hybrids 
of irregular size. Poisons of the puffer fish, the scaled, 
the seven-headed; and though they’re meant to stand for
what is dark and evil, their beauty still is terrible
to behold. Pistil or tulip bulb, zebra swallowtail 
butterfly with a body of burnished hair; the gleam
of shields and swords raised for lethal strike. In Giotto’s
“Lamentation of Christ,” more notable than the mourners
who have taken the body of Christ down from the cross
is the army of cherubs hovering like small planes, their grief
becoming blur against a thick impasto of clouds and sky.
Once I heard a sermon which said sacred scripture shows 
God and the angels have feelings, but more intensely 
than those of humans. Never fear, said the announcing  
angel to Mary— which meant his countenance was far 
from benign, even if he was holy. In the depths of our own 
grief as we wring our hands and rend our hair, our keening
ascends into the air as if, too, from the mouths of angels.