Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,
O angels, insatiably
into God’s gaze.
Perversity
could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.
But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings – he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam –
that a mud – bound spirit might soar.
NEXT Poem
– Tr. Barbara Newman
~ From: Symphonia: a critical edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum
Also in: Women in Praise of the Sacred: Ed Jane Hirshfield