At midnight the Angel flew over the sky,
and his singing was quiet yet strong
and the moon, and the stars, and the gathering clouds
paid heed to that glorious song.

The earth was in awe, and it trembled in fear,
for the song was both bandage and blade;
it healed us like balm, yet it wounded the soul
and left it more whole as it frayed.

It offered us peace, yet it thundered like war
in a silence more awful than cries;
the heavens bent low with unbearable weight
of the stars burning fierce in the skies.

The Angel sang fire, yet the fire became cold,
and it blazed with crepuscular gloom;
it kindled the sky with the brilliance of ash,
causing roses of darkness to bloom.

His threnody tore through the fabric of time,
unravelling midnight from day;
the fate of the earth, like a scroll, was unsealed
and his fire scorched the writing away.

The Angel cried life, and the graves split apart,
yet the living fell silent as stone.
The oceans leapt skywards to swallow the stars
and the void claimed the earth for its own.

The song of the Angel then faded away
to a hush more immense than the sky;
and all that remained was the echo of words…
to languish, to fade, or to die.

.

(with apologies to M. Iu. Lermontov)