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Angel: relief carving, 1689, above north entrance to Church of the Assumption, Anauri, Italy (image by Vladimir Shioshvili, 2006)
The angel asked, as his shoulders were pressed into the stone
Why me? And taken from the inhabited body,
Like the lyric voice rustling from memory forests,
Childhood rushes toward death, a wind in those woods,
Crashing through trees, dying out,
Settling like a white mist over everything.
Angel: relief carving, Romanesque period (12th c.), Pécs Cathedral, Hungary (image by Takk, 2009)
A beautiful poem, Tom, which amongst other things helped me see the child caught in that first angel's grumpy downturned mouth and dressing-up-box wings. You have a great collection of angels dotted about on the blog - it'd be interesting to round them up and listen in on the conversation.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Barry. I fear that poor angel has been knocked about a bit, from the looks of him -- a pouting child as you suggest, with wings perhaps borrowed from the wardrobe closet of the Higher Seraphim while they out for a night on the town.
ReplyDeleteYou've put me in mind of Charles Lamb's somewhat irreverent (speaking of troublesome child) poking of fun at Coleridge on the subject of the dignity of the Angelic Orders -- do they ever sneer?"
Thanks for redirecting me, Tom - Lamb on fine gadfly form, and the face on that seraph! - like a boy forced to dress up for his big sisters' theatricals. For eternity.
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