After Salvador Dalí, The Fallen Angel, purgatorio canto 1, The Divine Comedy, 1960
Like the fallen angel before me,
I open myself up like kitchen drawers,
trying to see what’s inside.
Oh, god, there’s nothing in there.
Empty, be thy name
and mine.
There’s nothing left to fill,
the fire of falling consumes all.
I can rebuild
but everything that filled
me is destroyed
or left behind somewhere I’m not
welcome anymore,
I can’t go back, oh, god.
Empty by thy name,
and I have to fill it up.
I have to fill it up.
But,
I behold the fallen angel before me
and it fell.
It’s wings are in tatters and it’s body
lays in ruin and it’s achingly sad,
but it’s here in front of me.
And I do have to wonder,
did it ever even want to be full?
Maybe there’s a bit of-
I don’t know,
maybe it was a conscious decluttering.
Can you choose to fall?
Did my angel?
Maybe it opened itself up like kitchen drawers
and saw they were too full
of things put there by someone else.
Empty, be thy name
and mine.
I open myself up
and the spaces in me suddenly
seem so bountiful.
All that nothing is only the promise of
time
to be spent-
a conscious decluttering
a fall from heaven
the fire consumes all-
by my angel and I
to choose how we are full.
