Angels are just a problem of scale - you look
At clouds for long enough, they will sprout wings;
Angels, sylphs, undines, gnomes and salamanders,
Why should we count any of them holy?
Their iron wings stretched out to gather the traffic,
They are the lightning when two spheres collide
And the electric air tintinabulates, sparks,
Arcing with choirs of cherubim and seraphim
As two worlds swing and sway, their portals open,
pealing like the bells of angelus.
Like Blake, I've started seeing them everywhere:
Angels hovering over power stations -
(The stations of the cross)
They watch for me: and the hitcher who vanished
From my backseat on that dark and rainy night
Has probably left a single downy feather:
"So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be"
Does this include that tall dark stranger
By the black canal, who waits
Wings folded patiently, for the lonely midnight drunk,
(Who is also me) to see him safely home?
Does this include the gardeners, now dead
Who left their nurseries for other trenches
But come back on summer evenings
When early moths float under earth-scented leaves?
I do not know about these messengers, enigmatic hearsay,
Tales told by old women to their daughters
Told by old men of Mons to cub reporters.
I only know that, now I speak to angels,
All angels have become one angel,
Whose voice I will hear from now on in my mind:
All angel voices are now one voice, and it's yours.
