The sky has rusted over in the night.

It creaks, it groans, bellowing as God's hammer

thuds and resounds against it. Like plummeting angels

splinters of inhuman glory blaze

through rents in Heaven's barricades.

Alarmed by the upheaval,

jagged birds explode from a tree's twistings,

screaming like shrapnel.

And the sky screams too,

battered and braced under each new assault,

under the hammer's punch and the rough clutch

of something wildly trying to get through.

But the sky holds firm, unyielding,

doggedly unbending as a martyr of old.

The hammer-blows falter, losing conviction,

and dwindle to nothing. Heaven's vault,

scoured and tempered,

fades up, steely blue.

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