Angels & Snakes

‘Ambo vegnon del grembo di Maria,’
disse Sordello, ‘a guardia de la valle,
per lo serpente che verrà vie via.’

‘Both come from Mary’s bosom,’

said Sordello, ‘to guard the valley
from the serpent that will soon appear.’

          — Dante’s Purgatorio, tr. Hollander

A pity angels don’t come for us, call

as we might, angels with broken-tipped spears

& great green wings auguring hell

for serpents daring to enter gardens where

we’ve posted signs claiming here is paradise.

The space between angel & demon is barely

gauged once night falls & star-full skies

blend light & dark, cause flower & snake,

bower & gate to menace human eyes.

Step quietly as we might, the snake

glides quietly too, toward us perhaps

bearing our final toxin though angling away,

wanting our encounter not to happen

as much as we do. One strike won’t cull

killer from serpent’s herd. No, it merely saps it.

Tell us, Angel, do we break taboo to kill it?

A Measured Narrowness

by Bin Ramke

The hare’s breath trembled the

leaf before the teeth devoured

narrowness of space between

hungers. Wretched rabbit.

A minuscule mind mattering

is a thing, is a smallness

of thing this lovely evening

when we sit on stones and light

creases the grasses before

us. Parkland. Seasons. A thing

called cognitive dysmetria applies

so every rabbit reduces — distinguish

hare from rabbit, light from

even lighter. Hispid Hare with

her little leverets bounding.

The leporid, or so

I imagine, is under this turf

with altricial babies, worrying.

What we call them,

Lagomorphs, part of the world.

Who says it, and why, and whether

“matter” means to make into

world what was only mind before:

orography, hill writing, makes clouds;

makes clouds rain. The little molecules

rabbitly rattling down the tin roof;

but the rabbits are safe in their holes

and the hares are faster than lightning,

and the writers all rigor and rightness.