Angels in America
Uncollated, 2004
through the halls and tenets of faith,
the star-filled vaults of heaven,
I walked,
watching the angels drift through the dust.
watching the poor wingless beasts of God
wade through the miasma and detritus of hope.
in my angelhood, my fatal humanity,
the poisoned spark of love that burns inside me,
in my angelhood, the broken, fractured arms of brotherhood,
I loved them all, in laughter and blood and tears and sweat.
in the greying dusk of winter, the hallowed arbours of spring and summer
the long fallow shadows of autumn
from the priesthood of Ginsberg's streets, the seminaries of intersections
the smooth skin of the student, the rough sinews of the welder,
the same, my saviour.
the heart is a cruicible hammered by day,
and formed and forged by the passions of night
I dream myself alive
and in the dreaming, the dreams of change and indifference,
the angels of my America are born:
radiant, glorious, in fabulous array.