Angels of the North

 


Being so caught up in coop and stay,
those yawed wings will not sway, nor shatter the coldest calm of winter's play
over the moor:

clumped feet clamped on the mound
root all angels fast. Air on their ground trails the high jets’ sound
over the moor;

their blood-rust drums on the clipped sky.
Staved backs to the east, eyeless, they face inland. Here they’ll die,
over the moor. 



“Being so caught up...” a phrase from “Leda and the Swan” by W.B. Yeats