Frieze

Over an edge of cloud the naked angel blasts his long horn downward and they rise, or try to, skeletons, half-skeletons, the still-fleshed bodies of the newly dead, rising and pushing up the stone lids, heaving the crypt doors open, clambering over one another, dumbstruck, frightened, warily peeking out from inside tombs, or out of ditches, their eye holes blacker than the black they peek from while some reach out of habit for a robe to hide a nakedness they have no longer, a phantom shame that must be all the bones remember of the living flesh they were, and all of them worn away to nearly nothing, more wisp of form than form, more wraith than wisp, as if before your eyes they’re sinking into what they’re rising out of, coming into view by fading from it, there and gone, as if the very stone, unsure of what it holds, can neither cling to nor relinquish now the dream of something in it more than stone, other than hard or heavy, as over the face of it the air of a wished-for morning ripples the robes to water while it washes through the skulls and half-skulls tilted back to see just what the noise is that won’t let them sleep.