Curious Christian

Antiphon for the Angels

Spirited light! on the edge
of the Presence your yearning
burns in the secret darkness,

O angels, insatiably
into God’s gaze.

Perversity

could not touch your beauty;
you are essential joy.

But your lost companion,
angel of the crooked
wings – he sought the summit,
shot down the depths of God
and plummeted past Adam –
that a mud – bound spirit might soar.

• Hildegard of Bingen