Dark Angel

He will come to me, the dark angel,
and will meet me face to face.

He will take all that I own,
for my wealth is only temporary:
health, wealth, possessions are all on loan.

My house, my wife, my car,
my daughter, my grand-child,
 my garden, my trees, my flowers,
my poetry, my works of art.
I use the possessive adjective
knowing full well that these things
are only on loan. I will never be able
to preserve and possess them.

I even rent this aching heart,
these ageing, migrant bones,
this death that has walked beside me,
step by step, every day
since the day that I was born.

My death alone is mine.
It belongs to nobody else.
It will be my sole possession.
It will soon be the only thing
I have ever really owned.

Comment:

Dark Angel is the third poem in the first sequence (Crystal Liturgy) of my poetry book Septets for the End of Time. The painting, by my friend Moo, expresses his impressions of how he reacts, in paint, to my poem, in words.

“Well,” I said to Moo, “you’ve gone and done it this time. Do you think that painting really represents my poem? I see no darkness in it and certainly no angel.”

Moo gave me a long, strange look. I felt like I was looking in the mirror and seeing parts of my own soul fragmenting and falling away, like scales from my eyes.

“It’s not what the poem says,” he replied. “It’s what I think you feel as you’re writing that poem. I see the tension, the cry from the heart, the struggle to accept, and the realization that, in the end, everything is inevitable and must turn out as it will. That said, more than anything, it is the cry, de profundis, from the depth of your self that I feel. My painting depicts that cry and your suffering.”

“What if it’s not my suffering? What if it’s the suffering of Messiaen and his musicians as they play the soul music that keeps them alive?”

“But surely,” Moo replied, “that’s the whole point. Orde Amoris, according to the recent Pope who has just passed away, is love felt for the person suffering, no matter who he or she is. Pope Francis spoke in praise of the parable of the Good Samaritan. When you see someone suffering at the wayside, you stop and help that person. You don’t just walk on by. Your suffering is my suffering. When I paint your suffering I also paint my own suffering and when you grieve, then I grieve with you.”

“And when that happens, when we all grieve together, we do not grieve alone and in vain.”

“Exactly.”