'vergesslicher Engel', by Madeline Howard
Inspired by the 1939 Paul Klee sketch of the same name. “Forgetful angel” in English. A prayer for a friend.
You will wash your kiss-pained faces in milk.
You will unwear all your rehearsals.
Your old feathers will molt,
oblivious to their own slough.
Memory will seep through
your throat and out your
furrowed shoulders. New wings,
assumptions blank as clouds,
will engulf you. A gaze-averted
faith will fold up first love and
its softness will not crack
over your head anymore.
Those hard-fought hope-refrains
will ripple and still. Thoroughly you
will lose everything you once
cradled. Later, nameless, it will find you.
Your puzzled palms will unclose their prayer.
You will tilt your head at it
as if a weightless dawn
had first illuminated the hue
of your long-closed eyelids,
Madeline Howard lives in Waco, Texas, where she was born. She teaches a little Latin but is mostly a student.
Paul Klee, “vergesslicher Engel” (1939) (wikimedia commons)
