The Haserot Angel

 

A paradox: the bronze eyes, blank of all compassion

Yet still weep, or seem to weep –

It all comes down to if you think

That everything you see, is all there is.

 

Explained away, it’s molecules reacting –

The stain of rain, just acid on metal,

Through a hundred smogs, etched supposed pain

For all those downturned torches, like the one

It holds, extinguished, as it occupies its solemn throne.

 

Ah, the Haserots: innocuous lost generations

Producing canned food, of all things,

Delivered to Ohio’s hungry hotels, steam in the kitchens,

Cigar smoke in the diners, brass spittoons, and a black porter

Taking your bags, while the streetcar clanged

And reverberating foghorns boomed off the distant river.

 

Their business, from the prairies to the stockyards

Stockyards to abattoirs, cattle driving over an endless plain

Built up their wealth by might of heart and brain.

 

Now, they are all beneath the angel’s thousand yard blank stare,

Below the wingspan spread, in that eternal stasis

We all dread: where are they now, their money, mansions,

Their treasury bonds, their dollar bills and pensions?

 

It is always quiet here, they say, not just in winter

When interlacing branches drip with freezing rain,

And your breath streams and vanishes in the dark

Like your soul, and you feel fog in the heart, and turn away

From something too intense: quiet also when the snow lies

In winter, quiet when the fresh sun’s light

Brings all the gardeners trundling back and forth in spring –

It all depends on what you think it means and

Whether you believe that all we see is all there is.

 

Whether you see a huge reminder

Of the unrelenting awful constant:

The finality of the extinguished, never to be re-kindled

Or if you see some kind of symbol for the mortal,

Standing for something big that lies behind,

A shape-shifting, shimmering chimera,

The guardian of some kind of portal,

Like those statues in Ireland that moved and wept:

Bronze can’t weep, but we can weep on its behalf, or make it so –

And a stone hand trembling gestures a thousand Hail Marys.

 

Bronze and tears don’t co-exist

But at some level, sub-atomic, if you look enough,

All you can see is electronic mist, what you call dear

Becomes, the more you look, the more unclear, and leaves

A totem, forcing thoughts – how real is real?

How is eternity nothing more or less

Than an endless, patterned, dancing of electrons?

 

This is the angel’s gift for me, the unlit torch, the precious tears

Passed on: it may not be the same for everyone

It all depends if you believe that all you see

Is all there is – it says, although the battle’s lost

Before it’s even started, so why fight?

 

Because, these mornings, driving off to work

The buds show forth green froth,

And the sheep have had new lambs, born overnight.

 

Palm Sunday 2009

 

“Lake View's most famous piece of graveside sculpture stands atop the grave of Francis Haserot and his family, near the Mark Hanna mausoleum at the edge of the cemetery proper. The Haserots, it turns out, are in the institutional-sized canned good business, and are famous for the quality of their product.  The name I've always heard attached to the piece is "The Angel of Death Victorious." The angel has his hands folded atop something that most people mistakenly call a sword. It would make sense, but in this case he's holding an upside down torch, symbolizing a life extinguished. His pose is creepy enough, but the years have streaked his bronze skin and caused tears of discolored metal to stream from his blank eyes.”

 – Forgotten Ohio, by Andrew Henderson