The poem is dead. 
The words are dead. 

The verbs crawl back into their tenses 
and practice perishing. 

The nouns flee to the suburbs
and bury themselves in Subaru wagons.

When the last adjective strangles itself
with the wires of an upright Wurlitzer,
the poet pens his epitaph 
on the margins of a terminal contraction,

but the church bells and cash registers 
resurrect themselves and resume their ringings—
sweetnesses to the ears unrelated 
to the conjunctions of sound and sense 
in little chapels called syntax and stanza. 

All the gods are glad to return 
to the diversions of their familial feuds
beyond the futile gestures of language. 

And the speechless angels,
shimmying their gossamer wings,
strum those golden harps
for another round of celestial singing.