Awakening

Transformation 2

from Rimbaud's Les Illuminations

A scent of female angels in this dawn Beckons me, half asleep, to mount their hill Whose green gilt daggers, pointed up at heaven, Accuse my burning nights of birth in hell. Ah, but I’ve escaped now, safe with these                                             wool-robed creatures. They flee from me who sometime did me seek For flame, I cannot move or think or speak. Fire rises on my right from dream-torn battles, But, look, how dawn progresses on my left. My woolly angels bleat. Like whorled sea-conches They moan and murmur, hurrying me aloft Out of reach of my feverish nightmare murderers. They mingle breeze, warmth, thyme and lanolin With vision, they leap into brain and skin.

Frances Richards, 'Mystic', from Les Illuminations, lithographs, Curwen Press, London  1975

Below, around, float soft abysmal stars,                                                                    © estate of Frances Richards
Pouring, as from a basket, overflowing,
Invisible, as flakes of summer sunlight
Or angels, now it is morning, petals flying,
As, down from my drowsy hill, I slide into daybreak.
Abysmal angels, sacrificial sheep,
Protect me, I have woken from my sleep.