Señor Despaïr

Against a Hopeless Time

A Poem by Christopher Bernard

3. The Angel

I waited for the old man

to answer, but all I heard was waves,

suddenly distant, as though withdrawing with

    the tide.

Then I saw a dim glow above the horizon

and watched as it grew stronger, felt my shadow

deepen with the appearance of the light.

The sky grew dull and stretched with cloud ribbons

and flattened out. The sea looked like pewter.

Then an edge of startling brightness

appeared beneath the scrambled glow,

and the sun edged upward, red and gold.

I turned to look at the old man,

but there was no one there. I was alone on the beach.

Had he walked away in disgust at my last speech?

Had he given up on someone so incorrigibly naive?

Had he even been there at all? No, he’d been there,

of that I was sure. Perhaps he had thrown himself

back into the sea from which he had come.

I watched as the sun rose like a head or like an eye

staring across a world that was all sky.

And a form broke from the sun and the far

calling of the waves. Nebulous as fog or cloud,

it seemed to step toward me over sand

brilliant and slippery as glass,

and I saw behind it a throng

of brilliant, smiling – were they angels? –

misty and fragrant as the breeze

that lifted from the sea.

The glowing form seemed to speak,

and it was the voice inside me,

bright and soft as an angel’s,

or as I would imagine an angel’s.

“Know this,” it spoke, as if close to my ear,

almost a whisper, and I strained to hear.

“Know this: we are perpetual creation.

Know this: we are the infinite world.

Time wee enter to work out the possible,

which knows no end and no beginning.

Know this: your task on earth

is to build possibility.

Know this: we are nature,

nature is ourselves.

Just as you are nature,

nature is you.

You are our hands and eyes

as we are yours in all that is.

The power of evil and good

is in your eyes and hands.

The ultimately beautiful is the ultimately real.

Know this: You are free. So: choose.”

And the smile of the diaphonous glowing figure

burned my face.

Suddenly the throng of angels,

and the sea and the shore and the sky

rang, like all the bells in all the cities

of the earth.

Though how could that be? How could any of this

    be?

And I was surrounded by the flocking and singing of

    many birds.

And the waves glittered before me,

and I heard enchanting laughter.

And the air smelled of shells and brine and roses

and smoke, perfume, wine, and brandy and

     apples.

And a crab made mock with a clam, and a blade of

    grass

traced in the dunes the outline of the loveliest of girls

to the dip of a breeze and a turn of a sun ray. And a

    falcon

traded mysteries with a dove. And wind

swept up the sand in a glory of wind devils

swirling in shapes of Carmen, Venus, Tamara,

formed in a moment, in the next cast back

to sand and wind. And whiteness throned in clouds

    above,

and wind and galleons moved across the blueness

    like a sea,

a moment hoped for, lost, here, once, forever.

And the sun as it rose opened and filled the sky

for a moment that passed like a breath

with a beauty that was infinite

and a love that was for all time.

_____ Christopher Bernard’s most recent collection of poems is titled The Beauty of Matter, “A Pagan’s Verses for a Mystic Idler.” Señor Despaïr will appear in book form from Real Magazine Productions,