Dead Man, Here, Today, Saint

[xantipopeninjax]

Wings: light, thin, like translucent paper; green

the square stone steps
tackled by raindrops
surrounded by older buildings
are covered,
by hundreds of wet black
bat wing umbrellas:
over the mourners in the
old city.
some cry,
but most are silent.

silohetted
standing against the sky,
golden throned Virgin
presides over the
mourning mass,
from the center of the twisting spires.

i remember
walking along them
when the sun was out,
before the icy february
remembered itself.

a leader is lost. we would see a leader!
but by some obscure causation
in the past years,
today the dead man draws crowds
through past words.

the ground is still slick with
rain and voices
from umbrellas
that echo hosannas from inside,
read from handed pamphlets.

he is dead,
this man who said
so many things.

screens to show
his body inside
where it lays
on the altar.

hosannas are raised and set
down like dream or old letters
but nothing has happened yet.