Angels go
We merely stray
Image of a wandering deity
Searching for wells or for work
They [bad word] 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 [bad word] 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 symmetry 
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. 
little written may be far too much to read.

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 [bad word]   [bad word] to expect nothing but [bad word] 

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
increases.

I see only a surface – [bad word] enough, 
its [bad word] 
of deep blue – 
suggesting that the earth is hollow, 
stretched around what must be all the rest.

My 'world' is parsimonious – 
a few elements [bad word]  
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 [bad word] 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.