The angels are all around us.
Some are bright and nearby.
There are also fainter and more distant angels,
until it seems as if there is no end to them.
They cross into this city from ether,
wave like disturbances
in the combined electromagnetic field.
Yet they occupy
no absolute position
in absolute space.
When a child blinks out the winter sun,
an angel has brushed past the eyelashes.
Wrens swoop through their brilliant pathways.
The angel's wings have grown from birds
and the afterglow of creation haunts them.
Earthly origin: inside horses and donkeys.
Heaven's alchemy:
they pervade the whole galaxy,
as cosmic microwave background radiation,
or as a substance that is present
in empty space.
Earth is moving in its orbit around the sun.
To arrive here,
angels travel through the ether.
They come as light,
moving towards us at different speeds.
Yet when we were still young,
the angels seemed to be moving away from us
and the more distant ones
appeared to be fainter,
than those nearest to our holy city.
This is called the expansion of the angels.
Commonsense notions, or ideas of space and time
don't work at all, when it comes to them.
Angels abandon absolutes, simply
forces of electricity and magnetism.
Nothing may travel faster than the speed of light,
except angels, who have no intrinsic mass.
They are present everywhere.
I saw an angel who knelt by the fountain.
All the grey statues awake in our presence.
The force of his gaze was eliptical, distant.
I could spiral into it or escape from it.
Finally, in this state of absolute rest,
from a body not driven by impulse,
I have experienced these holy angels.
It is like being surrounded by a city of kurrajongs,
after crossing a forest of stars.
It has taken an infinite amount of energy to get here.
