The
other day a friend phoned, interested in the idea in my poem about dining with
angels. She asked me what I might do and say if an angel came to call. I don’t know the answer to that, apart from
thinking it would be essential to show welcome and hospitality as angels in
stories and films appear to act adversely if not treated well.
I
was also asked if I had any particular angels in mind in my poem. The answer is
probably the ones who came as strangers to Abraham when he was in his tent overlooking
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (the angels were on their way to check these
and other cities out with a view to total destruction if insufficient good men
and women could be found). They also gave Abraham the startling news that his
post menopausal wife, Sarah, would give birth to a child. When Sarah was told
of this she laughed scornfully, thereby angering the angels.
More
than this bible story though, my imagination was caught by the paintings of
Roger Wagner, an artist whose work I love, particularly ‘ The Harvest is the End
of the World and the Angels are Reapers’ and ‘Abraham and the Angels’.
Here
is the poem and the images.
A MESOLITHIC SLANT
He’s
on the cusp of revolution though he’ll never know it –
any
more than voles in the barley who’ll breed a Scottish line.
All
he can tell is that his world
(his
scary and stinking-of-animal world)
is
threatened by settlers who savage the pine
and
turn wild boar into pig.
Just
so does sunlight
shove
its small beak through an earlier fog, lifting its face
to
brightening air, like one who unwittingly
dines
with an angel and cannot
be
sure, for the rest of his life, if it’s fear
or
elation he’s in.
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