Against Dark Angels

Precept for a Too-Careful Young Man

Man-made is refuge; creaturely the light.

Against dark angels build your sheltering wall

between the known and night—against the night—

and lock your door securely against call.

Let paralax of suns repeat their song

in measured beat and chartered scale,

nor ask what lost immensities may throng

within; the whippoorwill but once need wail.

For if some stranger angel beat the air

one dusk to alien music, rousing the skies

to knowledge before his shattering tonics there

like blood-wild singing armor, and heart cries—

caught up in leaps of warring turn and sound—

deliverance to inhuman ecstasy,

poor wingless flesh, how lift you to his ground?

By what star fly to peril, risen, free?