Antiphon for the Angels

Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,

O angels, insatiably
into God’s gaze.

Perversity

could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.

But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings – he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam –
that a mud – bound spirit might soar.

 NEXT Poem

- Hildegard of Bingen

- Tr. Barbara Newman
~  From: Symphonia: a critical edition of the Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum

Also in:  Women in Praise of the Sacred: Ed Jane Hirshfield

Links

- Christian Mystics

- Spiritual Poets