Day draws near/ Do what you can

That's me on our right, with the two pigtails and the beatifically outstretched arms

On Angels
by Czeslaw Milosz*

All was taken away from you: white dresses,
wings, even existence.
Yet I believe you,
messengers.

There, where the world is turned inside out,
a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts,
you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.

Short is your stay here:
now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear,
in a melody repeated by a bird,
or in the smell of apples at close of day
when the light makes the orchards magic.

They say somebody has invented you
but to me this does not sound convincing
for the humans invented themselves as well.

The voice---no doubt it is a valid proof,
as it can belong only to radiant creatures,
weightless and winged (after all, why not?),
girdled with the lightning.

I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draws near
another one
do what you can.

*Here is a good article about Milosz. I have a special fondness for him because back before I got married I was planning to go to Oxford and study poetry with one of Milosz' former students, Seamus Heaney (the man who wrote this article--and who also knew my teacher, Leslie Norris, who is the one who suggested studying with Heaney in the first place). How's that for an obscure connection? :)

I love this poem because I've occasionally heard those same voices---had that same feeling of almost being able to grasp something important, see something I'm just missing . . . and then it fades and I'm left with the intangibles: feelings of hope and resolve and comfort: keep trying---you're going to make it---"Do what you can."

Here's a scripture that says the same thing (Isaiah, of course. He must have heard those angels too): "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season unto thee, O house of Israel. When ye are weary he waketh morning by morning."

When I'm weary, hope (and trust in God) can awaken me---one morning at a time. You've felt that, right? And when you make it through a particularly dark time, you can almost hear that whisper: "See? I told you. Morning always comes again."