On Angels

Portrait of Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz 1911–2004

All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence. Yet I believe you, messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out, a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts, you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seems.

Shorts is your stay here: now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear, in a melody repeated by a bird, or in the smell of apples at close of day when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you but to me this does not sound convincing for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice -- no doubt it is a valid proof, as it can belong only to radiant creatures, weightless and winged (after all, why not?), girdled with the lightening.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep and, what is strange, I understood more or less an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near another one do what you can.

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