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 self-forgetting – and, greatest of all,
is the Angel of Not Knowing a Thing Any More.