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, a publisher based in India, later this year.