I feel as though you are an angel,
And I am a ghost.
You are a pleasant dream that hides behind a bush,
And I am a creature lost in eternal dry-spun hope.
I am like a goblin,
A goblin caught in his own fire.
I come out yet again,
With a grin that your beauty inspires.
We’ve been on this merry-go-round since the early ages of time.
Since the sun first rose and gave birth to the human mind.
I cannot remember a moment through all that has passed
When I was yours in your blissful abode, and yet how the romance lasts!
Oh Angel! Oh Dream!
Oh, won’t you speak clear to me!
Have mercy upon me! Allow me to break from your heavenly spell.
Either let me in or let me alone!
I have not been at ease since your light first shone!
Allow me to once again wander in valleys, and
Meander along the beach; and
Won’t you let me do so without any beckoning sea, and
Without the evangelists who cannot cease to preach.
I do not seek loneliness.
Nay! I seek solitude.
It is nothing but the former that I feel in your holiness.
I wonder sometimes if I am but your entertainment, an unpaid prostitute.
Leave me! Leave me! Leave me! Leave me! Leave ME!
I am content among the lame and the poor.
Yes, I will once again walk among the human, the worn-out and torn.
We are in the journey together, you see. This journey against judgment, ridicule and heavenly scorn.
There is beauty and fragility in earth and humanity.
Well beyond that which you can even fathom in your scriptures for eternity.
I will be their brother.
I will be their guardian and protector.
I will show them the divine within themselves and in each other.
There can be no salvation in any abstract trinity,
But only in the final, choral embrace of humanity.
Alas! I feel no strain nor pull.
Your light no longer blinds me.
Judgment no longer encircles me.
At long last, I am at peace.
I stand in darkness once again.
I sit beside a homeless man on the street.
In that moment, I take him as my brother, and
He takes me as his friend.
—
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
-William Blake
Ren Michael 