| after Paul Klee
I Geist der Schiffer
The angels that come in the night
are thinner
and could be mistaken
for shadows,
like the blackness in old coins
or scraps of dialect.
They slip through when no one is watching;
sometimes, they leave
handprints
or a trail of talc and myrrh
but never enough
to scare us,
as these creatures of the day
who might even be what they seem
— the greengrocer’s
son,
the woman who cleans for the doctor —
these terrible, sweet
faces at the window, seemingly
indifferent
against the yellow light
of afternoon,
with somewhere else to go
yet touched with a sudden warmth
like pieces of litmus,
everyday people:
street sweepers,
fishmongers’ wives,
handling the things of the earth
but awake to the sky.
II wachsamer Engel
— one definition of grace,
they hover against our doors, but never come
to rest;
not messengers at all,
but
messages made flesh
— or, rather,
cartilage and feather,
blood and song,
fixed to a point or a moment
no matter how far
they wander:
windows and open
hallways;
lamplight and flames
attract them
though they never see themselves
as we do: chosen,
ahistorical,
falling away from the surface;
falling away
while light decays
and form returns to dust.
III Engel, übervoll
For years it was secret;
then, one night,
it lights a lamp
and stands at an upstairs window,
looking out
at something within and beyond
its own reflection;
and what we mistake for the self
has withered away,
replaced by a body
that asks
what the world would ask
something fine-tuned and immense
its flourish of light
a shape for the wind
a shape
for the oriole’s singing.
I think of the people we are
in the hour before dawn
the long conversations we have
when the rain is unending
the silence we happen upon
in the litmus of snow
and nothing is really precise,
though a phrase heard in passing
can make it seem the world is possible
again: a world of memory and light
I carried so long
though I knew
there was nothing to carry.
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