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Angelology & Demonology
The angel of gravity drops me down an infinite shaft at whose bottom I
spread, God-oil, into an infinite circle.
Figures running in reverse-clouds, equations, sacred texts-converge upon a
place foretold by the demon of abandonment.
The angel of dice fills the sky with negative constellations; there is a
pattern to their pivoting I cannot determine.
La Penultime est morte: invocation of the demon of analogy.
The angel of triangles rotates me through the cardinal points: loser,
keeper, and lost. My face appears to shift like wax at each displacement,
but only the light changes.
The sirens of Beauty and the sirens of Emergency are one and the same,
according to the demon of the air.
The angel of news impregnates us with separation's gluey sperm; we give
birth to an immense grey simulacrum called Necessity.
Information's body, eaten from within. Every signal relies on-folds
back-the redundancy that chance chants. Devorations of the devotions of the
demon without a name.
The angel of surgery wears a body made of clean red arcs.
By a neat-fingered trick, the coolest vapors may be segregated from the
warmest in a sealed chamber; the dark brain may be lighted again, if left
to the care of Maxwell's demon.
The angel of repetition gives a single cry that echoes along the endless
vault of his throat, having died long before his utterance is
heard.
Predations that pre-date the predicate of Time, whose residue is the rosy
dew of dying suns, are committed by the demon with the head
of an angel.
The angel of helium juggles her halo of needles with the absolute calm that
inflates the moment of extinction.
Do not listen to messages propagated by invisible means through the aether.
Voices that issue from telephones, radios, and other devices, no matter how
familiar and how trusted, are the mimicry of demons.
The angel of denial whispers behind the dark trees at the shores of
reflection: The sky's image has no roots.
An angle of vision is twisted into the shape of an angel by the demon of
perspective.
The angel of families is a blacksmith driving us into a hoof; only our
faces, flattened into mirrors for stones, remain outside the curve of
belonging.
Pinned like a butterfly to the table of taxonomy, its wings still waving
feebly, is the shadow of the mind: pending further examination, it will be
labeled either an "angel" or a "demon."
The angel of weeping drills tiny oceans in the snow.
Commas are inserted between everyday objects, semi-colons between moments
of doubt; colons are placed before the abyss: a period marks the end of
Time. These are signatures of the demon of continuum.
The angel of revenge tears bread between his teeth, bread he scatters like
the future as soon as we invoke him.
A poem, unlike a proposition of logic, cannot be refuted. But there is a
light that leaks slowly from its edges, and it becomes empty. The words
remain, perhaps, but they grow still. The thoughts of a demon are no
different.
The angel of presence batters down the door but leaves it intact, marked
with the Aleph, the throat's hesitation before speech.
Copyright 1999, Adam Cornford and Andrew Joron. All rights reserved.