angels
my sense is that all winged creatures are angels –
hummingbirds, bees, flies, mosquitoes, gnats – even wasps,
fairies, buttercup, pegusi – also boeing 747’s –
‘noise is arythmic and a creature’ – pronounced john cage
and there are some, few, people who are angels – they fly –
people flapping arms who just give everything filling our nothing
with something – without deception attached – angels
i say – they’re everywhere – so much so we swoosh them away.
as far as the heavenly type is concerned, that doesn’t concern me –
i’ll travel only so far and then give up in loss and victory –
such is death – and i will greet them with the same respect
to flying insects – for whatever reason insecurity wounds my soul.
the heart of my fellow-travelers silent from a distance
reaches inside my bones – to that place where i unfold wings.
.
_______________
William Fairbrother
Review by Brendan McEntee
people flapping arms who just give everything filling our nothing
with something – without deception attached – angels
i say – they’re everywhere – so much so we swoosh them away.”
People are now angels, and so many that they’ve become pointless. The demarcation line of spirit has been broken and the line between god-kind, angel-kind and mankind ceases to exist. And this is not discomforting, because, the tropes of language allow us to stay within the poem. If the concept of angels as ascendant beings holds, than what better for we, the fallen, to assume their grace. And by stanza three, all have been leveled: heavenly angels, the only kind, well:
“as far as the heavenly type is concerned, that doesn’t concern me -/i’ll travel only so far and then give up in loss and victory -/such is death – and i will greet them with the same respect/ to flying insects –…” At this point in the poem, the angel of the title and the opening line is gone, exploded while still remaining locked in the language. Now, the angel is less about its spirit than about the host—the community in which the angel lives, and the narrator is not a part of. In order to fulfill the mystic notion of angelhood, it must be reduced and redirected. Given the unfixed nature of language in a relative age, that can happen. That, however, the stanza ends “for whatever reason insecurity wounds my soul.” illustrates the failure of the achievement. Although insects, men, fairies and planes exist as angels doesn’t assuage the narrator’s feelings of separation and loneliness and may serve to compound them. The “wounded soul” (a purple image to be sure), the hero-victim who sees a world in which all is transcendent but still suffers from self-doubt becomes a fallen angel, but remains an angel. The narrator becomes the symbol of doubt and person in crisis, alienated by his insecurity while at the same time continuing the Romantic tradition. Though we’ve been taken for a ride with the narrator, manipulated and turned around, we still identify with the narrator’s self-doubt. The poem finishes with the narrator, at a distance, engaging in the power: “the heart of my fellow-travellers silent from a distance/reaches inside my bones – to that place where i unfold wings.” Silence has become a sound, (counter-intuitive to the cage pronouncement in stanza 1) and the fellow travelers, “from a distance” are able to elevate the narrator. The wings unfold in the spirit, not the flesh, forcing difference, forcing a moment of clarity in the world that he has created.
Though we have a moment where angel wings are stirred within the narrator, the poem is thoroughly tragic. The moment of transcendence is compromised by the narrator’s insecurity, his need to be separate: though the universe of the poem is of his own creation, he cannot accept the terms of his creation and must be satisfied with living in the pale, a Byronic model in modern isolation. Recasting language hasn’t saved the narrator, and while his wings may, for a moment, but stirred by his compatriots, his distance—comprised of his self-doubt—leaves him not fallen, but lost.