POEM
One Angel: Palazzo Arian, at San Raffaele Arcangelo
Ann SnodgrassAt San Raffaele Arcangelo
One angel got it all wrong.
She plopped into this
sad century feet first
in her dark clothes.
There wasn't much water
that winter—just a few
puddles really—
to break her fall.
Mud-splattered, she rose
and shook like a canine.
It didn't take long
to see her soaked wings
as a backdrop to all
the nonmagic to which we were
accustomed, or to see
what passed for history
as a forgetting of sorts.
(Was that one or two wars?)
Strange how, as she limped
down a dim vicolo,
some willful disc hovered
above her more florid
than a sky—how the putrid
puddles with their last
reflections could neither
correct nor register that light.
Source: Poetry (April 1999).
