Meeting the Angel, Tasting What It Sees I Poem by Tim Lilburn

Ten yards of mineral hair fall inside the cruciform hummingbird,

inside these unthrottled, ox-bearded shoulders of wasps.

Egyptian quail, the Orient of the quail, are a ringed hand

swum over this strangled grass,

the stone jaws of dragonflies sleep's hinge over this near-fire

ground.

The falling inside everything is cymballing nudity, cosmos-reciting ladder.

Now is in the cougar's mouth.

Look at these ferns. See, you hand goes into their side.

The gods bleed into dead leaves, bark, pieces of tile,

stab their bodies in, behind their slate windows.

The wasps with lavender scales touch it, in jade earflares

nose-bunt the near-fire ground.

The falling inside everything is tranced, encyclopedic nudity,

cymballing ladder.

The infected antennae of wasps, arced terracotta

wasps, their asphalt pyramid eyes.

A feathered concussing suck and you are in the operating theatre light

muscle of plucked ignorance, gowned in your lowest face, this

is meeting the angel, angelicity

is your lotteried face, chloroformed but bright fruited into you.

The angel cuts in, scooping over, its odor

an early metal, possibilities, burnt strips of paper, coldhammered inside.