Stone Angels - Ulver

Angels go — we

Merely stray, image of

A wandering deity, searching for

Wells or for work.

They scale

Rungs of air, ascending

And descending — we are a little

Lower.

The grass covers us

But statues, here, they stand, simple as

Horizon.

Statements

Yes — but what they stand for

Is long fallen

Angels of memory: they point

To the death of time, not

Themselves timeless, and without

Recall.

Their

Strength is to stand

Still, afterglow

Of an old religion

One can imagine them

Sentient — that is to say, we may

Attribute to stone-hardness, one after the

Other, our own five senses, until it spring

To life and

Breathe and sneeze and step

Down among us

But in fact, they are

The opposite of perception: we

Bury our gaze in them.

For all my

Sympathy, I

Suppose they see

Nothing at all, eyeless to indicate

Our calamity, breathless and graceful

Above the ruins they inspire

I could close my eyes now and

Evade, maybe, the blind

Fear that their wings hold

The visible body expresses our

Body as a whole, its

Internal asymmetries, and also the broken

Symmery we wander through

With practice I might

Regard people and things — the field

Around me — as blots: objects

For fantasy, shadowy but

Legible.

All these

Words have other meanings.

A little

Written may be far too

Much to read

A while and a while and a while, after a

While make something like forever

From ontological bric-a-brac, and

Without knowing quite what they

Mean, I select my

Four ambassadors: my

Double, my shadow, my shining

Covering, my name

The graven names are not their

Names, but ours

Expectation, endlessly

Engraved, is a question

To beg.

Blemishes on exposed

Surfaces — perpetual

Corrosion — enliven features

Fastened to the stone

Expecting nothing without

Struggle, I come to expect nothing

But struggle

The primal Adam, our

Archetype — light at his back, heavy

Substance below him — glanced

Down into uncertain depths, fell in

Love with and fell

Into his own shadow

Legend or history: footprints

Of passing events.

Lord

How our information

Increaseth

I see only

A surface — complex enough, its

Interruptions of

Deep blue — suggesting that the earth

Is hollow, stretched around

What must be all the rest

My 'world' is parsimonious — a few

Elements which

Combine, like tricks of light, to

Sketch the barest outline.

But my

Void is lavish, breaking

Its frame, tempting me always to

Turn again, again, for each

Glimpse suggests more and more in some

Other, farther emptiness

To reach empty space, think

Away each object — without destroying

Its position.

Ghostly then, with

Contents gone, the

Vacuum will not, as you

Might expect, collapse, but

Hang there

Vacant, waiting an inrush of

Reappointments seven times

Worse than anything you know, seven other dimensions

Curled into our three

But time empties, on

Occasion, more quickly than

That.

Breathe in or out.

No

Motion movies

Trees go down, random and

Planted, the

Way we think

The sacrificial animal is

Consumed by fire, ascends in greasy

Smoke, an offering

To the sky.

Earthly

Refuse assaults

Heaven, as we are contaminated by

Notions of eternity.

It is as if

A love letter — or everything I

Have written — were to be

Torn up and the pieces

Scattered, in

Order to reach the beloved

No entrance after

Sundown.

Under how vast a

Night, what we

Call day

What stands still is merely

Extended — what

Moves is in space

Immobile figures, here, in a

Race with death, gloom about their

Heads like a dark nimbus

Still, they do — while standing —

Go: they’ve a motion

Like the flow of water, like

Ice, only slower.

Our

Time is a river, theirs

The glassy sea

They drift, as

We do, in this garden so swank, so grandly

Indiscriminate.

Frail

Wings, fingers too fragile.

Their faces

Freckle, weathering

Pure spirit, saith the Angelic

Doctor.

But not these

Angels: pure visibility, hovering

Lifting horror into the day

To cancel and preserve it

The worst death, worse

Than death, would be to die, leaving

Nothing unfinished

Somewhere in my life, there

Must have been — buried now under

Long accumulation — some extreme

Joy which, never spoken, cannot

Be brought to mind.

How else, in this

Unconscious city, could I have

Such a sense of dwelling?

I would

Raise… What’s the opposite

Of Ebenezer?

Night, with its crypt, its

Cradle-song.

Rage

For day’s end: impatiance

Like a boat in the evening.

Towards

The horizon, as

Down a sounding line.

Barcarolle

Funeral march

Nocturne at high noon