(En-voys, En-vois, En-voies, En-voix)

Bailie oweth me 200 li and Adrian Gilbert 600 li. In Jersey, I have also much monye oweing mee. Besides the arrerages of the Wynes will pay my debts. And howesoever you doe, for my soules sake, pay all poore men.

Sir Walter Raleigh, Letter to his wife from the Tower of London

 

1

Here descends an angel fallen from his perch. Feet cracking my skull.       Greetings. Friend and comrade. With your gat-toothed grin.

Your eyes flaming hoops for dogs to jump through. Your fists full of
      basil maggots and anemones.

I look up. I look inwards, I go to meet my God. I am the mountain he
      climbs down in search of flowers.

 

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2

Sonnenuntergangstraurigkeit on the waterfront at Milina. Wolfgang
      (from Hamburg) is writing. In English. A poem.

The sea bends hovers and dips its silver wings. Around your stone smile,
      Pelion, as you prepare for sleep

Your hair smells of chestnut olive and pine. It whispers around the bay.
      The light, so sharp it creaks,

Has twisted the roots of tears and cut them out of my eyes. I've no more
      weeping in me.

And now the sun, as the Greeks say, is kinging into sea haze. It slides
      down very quickly now

Like a coin into a mouth. A golden lozenge for Charon. Now helplessly
      the cicadas

Tune their leggy instruments in permanent rehearsal. Petros and Theo
      have gone off to find a taverna. Bruni und Elfi

Are yet playing volleyball. Yoko chats with Louisa. Sven listens pensively.
      Finger on his chin.

Brigitte takes photos. Nevère si az cine eni cinque seau fantastique. Liz lies in
      the minibus. Cross sunburnt and with cramp.

Will you meet me Heathrow Thursday 29th. Flight 259 Olympic 09.35. Forgive       these scrappy notes instead of a proper letter.

Will tell you all about it when I see you in London. Wolfgang's poem is finished.       He's simply dying

To show it me. Must go now. See you soon. XXX. Love

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3

Hey you there Rolf. I shout to one I thought I recognised. On the far side
      of the steps. Shouldering his slab of stone.

His mouth forms the shape of a single word. Panic. He repeats it over and
      over. Panic Panic Panic. Hey Rolf, I shout, louder

I can't hear you properly. Don't you remember me. We met I think in
      Kanalia at the Festival of the Almonds.

But no sounds vibrate between his first and final plosives. He looks neither
      right nor left.

Behind him a girl stumbles. I know her at once. I had met her in the
      piazza. Hey Veronica, I call. What are you doing here.

She coughs blood as if trapped in diesel fumes. She spits and picks up her
      stone again. Froth drips from her lips.

In slow motion she passes me. As if I wasn't there. The guards light
      cigarettes and swap lottery tickets.

Hey Dad, I cry. Mum. Hey Bertha Bessie Manny. Hey Percy Anya Tom. Hey
      my seven Williams. Osip and Marina. Hey Dylan of the Wave.

I call and I recall. But not hard or near enough. I whimper, Won't you speak
      to me. I'm trying to listen, honest.

They march on and on. Nobody turns round. Nobody bats an eyelid in
      even a wink of greeting. The guards slouch, grinning like statues.

The pile of stones grows bigger. I know – they are building a temple. I can't
      hear you, I whisper. I don't understand the code.

Only walls steps tunnels stones speak to me. Through their deaf dumb
      sightless faces.

 

§§§

4

And these were wearers of the winged sandals. And these bearers
      of thyrsus and drum. Minstrels who lorded and led the dance

With flutes timbrels and banners flying. And these, unacknowledged
      legislators

Who knew the languages of trees and birds. Some were proud and some
      humble. And some famous in their time.

Look there's one with his tongue torn out. And who is that with broken
      fingers and on his back a stringless guitar

Under the Arc de Triomphe at the far end of the line. You here too.
      Orphée . . .

 

§§§

 

5

I will speak. Yes I will. I will not, cannot be silenced. I am responsible for
      this seed landed here called Human

To root it through and through me till every pore breathes. That it break
      this sheen on the stuff of things.

That it scratch this varnished light a little. To trace what lies beneath it.
      That what be called gross or foul

Be charged with clearer breath. For blood, sweat, salt are particles of
      radiance. And shall be known by their true names

And for what they really are. But how perfection leaks from cracks in the
      bowl of now. And how time

Drips constant through the porous jar of presence. And how you and may
      waste, trying to fit shards together.

Yet I will speak. I must. And of these things too. This plant that grows
      from our speech in joy here I name: Community.

 

§§§

 

6

We walked around the hill brow, and stumbled upon a temple. Tucked
      into a rock-fold and perched on its own outcrop on the far side of the
      valley. Down we stumbled, then climbed narrow steps, and paused,

Muscles aching, panting before its portals. It seemed half-built or a part-
      abandoned ruin. The sky tumbled in, etching clean-edged shadows.
      Dwarfed by lion-topped pillars in the broad, half-roofed arena,

Squatted an old man, white-bearded, barefoot, wearing no more than a
      loincloth. Poised on the patterned floor like a lizard under the sun,
      statuesque in the late afternoon silence, self-absorbed as a child,

With mallet and chisel he played, and pegs and a line of hemp. And
      surrounded by piles of stone-chips, painstakingly he sorted – the blue
      and the green and the red, the opaque and semi-transparent,

The rainbow and spotted and speckled, the glossy and the polished, the
      rough edged and the pitted, the sparkling and iridescent, and the dull,
      that glowed, concave, as if swallowing light,

And those that held echoes or promises, gleaming or resplendent. And
      those that held depths, like eyes. Or mirrored skies, like wells. And
      those textured like parchment. Or tree-bark. Or flesh. Or leaves.

And my companion approached. And I followed and stood behind her, a
      little off to her right. And she asked the old master, When will this mosaic
      be finished? And he took, from a pouch at his waist,

An alabaster egg. And gestured to her to kneel, next to him, on his right.
      And closed her two hands over it, and closed his own over hers. And
      answered a single word, Never.

 

§§§

 

7

Once hearing music, I thought: A man or woman made this. And once
      there was a time before its pattern was. Before its form or harmonies
      had ever been conceived

Out of flesh and its travails. Out of the labour of hands. And before that,
      a time when not one single quaver of it had been the slenderest
      shadow. Less even than a shadow

Lying dark in its maker. Until it was shaped, crafted and nourished into
      light. And he or she no angel but human to the core. Who made it for
      you, for me, that we

Might see clear through it, build our own work upon it, and by our
      willing love, also transform our world. That through us, matter be known,
      transparent and resplendent

As music. And with these thoughts, I rejoiced to be in its history, to be
      alive in its time: my time now his and hers. And yours too, as you hear
      this. Which is not the time its maker

Lay less than a pip in an apple, unformed, unborn, unnamed. Yet to you
      and me in our times that maker of music reached out. And me here
      humanly touched. And moved to make this.

 

§§§

 

8

Hello Hello again. My voice is now approximately eighteen inches from
      yours. Give or take a bit. To account for your poor sight and hearing.
      Although I am ash in an urn

In Hoop Lane Crematorium. And you not knowing or caring even where
      Hoop Lane is. Or was. Not that this matters a dot a zero a windpuff or
      dustspeck. But I call that somehow nothing

Short of sheer miracle. And you saying all along you didn't believe in
      angels. Or talking to the dead. Or ghosts. Are you still really there.
      Haven't you rung off. Hello. Hello.

 

§§§

 

9

If you're still there, Angel. If you have not rung off. Brother. Sister. It's
      you I'm talking to.

And you too, Beachcomber on the shore of the world against time.
      The label on the package

'To Whom It May Concern' means you. It was meant specially for you,
      being the one who found it.

This voice, no longer mine, is yours now. Take it. Use it. Give it your
      own, far finer sound.

In hearing these words, rewrite yourself. Having no back cover, now the
      book is yours to complete

For who or what might an angel be, other than you. As for me, nil
      desperandum. I've a fair way to go

And am still growing strong. Cheerio for now. Sierra Romeo Bravo
      Uniform November. Over and out.

 

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