“I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.”
                                   —Luke 10:18

So John the Revelator got it wrong?
It wasn’t Michael and his angel throng

who threw the mighty Lucifer from his throne?
You’re telling me that seventy raw-boned

peasants passing barefoot from town to town,
carrying no money, no change of gown,

and sparing no time for chat with chance
encounters on the way—these sons who dance

among snakes and scorpions, whose quick steps
raise dust from heels to head—you mean these schleps

drew down from heaven upon unmapped squares
apocalyptic judgments no one dares

compare with those that wasted Sodom?
These day laborers harvested a kingdom?

These were the lambs who blacked the dragon’s eye,
who rumbled him down from his realm in the sky?