The Angles at Christmas
RTA Parker
On the fen outside the hall
fog and crisp frost by the canalside
pistons pop and the pilot light flairs,
the android dreams of returning to the factory
to be plugged back into the mainframe,
once more under torsion in the grading machine;
all locked up tight on Christmas Eve
the creak of a boot on the stairs.
The humans are off the production line,
gone from the workshops:
“now they are all on their knees,”
at prayer…
…the singularity…
…into dark lands under strange moons:
“now they are all on their knees,” biding in darkness.
And I fell, as a man who falls asleep.
Wandering, wandering…
lift eyes accustomed to darkness to the light of clear truth—
a flash brighter than a thousand suns.
Which chakra was blocked;
a neurotransmitter shorting,
scampering in the night.
And I fell down as a dead body falls.
Where the quiet thoughtlessness of the animals in the open?
Where is the gloomy combe our childhood used to know;
the cadaverous Windsors at Sandringham, clacking automatons (los he visto);
where are the robots in the Heideggerian open;
where are the shadows, walking still.
No part of the world untouched.
A carriage outside, its impatient pony stamping—
the steam curling up from out of its big long nose.
On great Aconcagua—snowblind upon the Mountain of Death,
yo he visto the vicuñas on their knees in the storm
a benediction for the peaceful Andean fox, looking out from the high peak
the cold stare of death
he has seen into the heart of things
as no pocket calculator
like no man.
To awake into consciousness
to move from the darkness of nothing
edge nervously into the greater darkness:
before I was dead, now I will die.
“Now they are all on their knees.”
Until the sea again closes over us—
thine eyes’ bright flashing shall fade into darkness—
the toll of the buoy before the reef; the gloom-darkening night;
dusty tarmac before the slipway—
Oh, noisy bells, be dumb;
I hear you, I will come.
