5/2/2012 – The Guardian Angel

Issue 21, Volume 2: Spring 2012
Poetry

I think of madmen with their panpipes circling round you, tilting their misshapen heads into your face. When their hands gesture at decapitation and a pair of them burst out giggling you worry about this experiment in embedding yourself in the modern world. You should have picked some other planet but a lingering addiction to oxygen sucked you in. Your previous visit as a late eighteenth century whale should have warned you off. But as the angel of the depths and the heights you keep returning to us, keep gazing into the eyes of those who suffer and love, keep offering yourself to the fire of our rage.

Peter Boyle is an Australian poet living in Sydney. He has published ve collections of poetry, including Apocrypha in 2009. A new and selected of his poetry Towns in the Great Desert is due out later this year.