The Angels

Should you hear them singing among stars
or whispering secrets of a wiser world,    
do not imagine ardent, fledgling children;    
they are intelligences old as sunrise        
that never learnt right from left, before     
from after,                
knowing but one direction, into God,            
but one duration, now.                

Their melody strides not from bar to bar,
but like a painting, hangs there entire,
one chord of limitless communication.
You have heard it in the rhythms of the hills,
the spiralling turn of a dance, the fall of words,
the touch of fingers at the rare, right moment,
and these were holy, holy.      
                                                         

 

John Vernon Taylor