The two nightingales menaced the children.

One was comprised of the snow of dead tears;
its feathers were the fathers whose ice
descends from Saturn’s wrath to caress
the sleeping faces of diseased rats,
and the carcasses of tyrannical gaps in
hideous mathematical extremities.

The other was a burning chalice whose handle
is that bone the moon summons on those nights
when the stars are black and the darkness
counterfeits its mothers
as they seduce rotten supplicants…
making teeth from the razors left over
when clocks shave lovely corpses
and greedily consume the hair.

The children ran, and cried out. None could hear them.
Their words were garbled squelches and gurgles.
Their own throats strangled in terror as the horrible birds
refused to break off their abysmal pursuit; they cried
to deaf saints, they dodged and pissed their garments.

The two nightingales menaced the children.