Gwyneth Lewis – Ⅵ

The Good, the Bad and the Complex 

 

 

 

In angel orders there are twelve degrees

of chaos. Nonsense; then scramble;

raving that’s modified into scat.

The sleeping orders’ psychedelic dreams

give rise to cities, till they wake

and trigger a local apocalypse.

There are angels of breakdown, and collapse

 

 

is their specialist subject. Angels of decline,

angels of entropy. Then angels who tell

you what to do when (that’s close to hell);

angels pedantic, angels of the Law.

The Complex orders know what chaos is for –

that’s for self-forgetting – and, greatest of all,

Is the Angel of Not Knowing a Thing Any More.

 

 

 

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