Ulver - Stone Angels lyrics

Angels go - we Merely stray, image of A wandering deity, searching for Wells or for work. They scale Rungs of air, ascending And descending - we are a little Lower. The gra** covers us But statues, here, they stand, simple as Horizon. Statements Yes - but what they stand for Is long fallen Angels of memory: they point To the d**h of time, not Themselves timeless, and without Recall. Their Strength is to stand Still, afterglow Of an old religion One can imagine them Sentient - that is to say, we may Attribute to stone-hardness, one after the Other, our own five senses, until it spring To life and Breathe and sneeze and step Down among us But in fact, they are The opposite of perception: we Bury our gaze in them. For all my Sympathy, I Suppose they see Nothing at all, eyeless to indicate Our calamity, breathless and graceful Above the ruins they inspire I could close my eyes now and Evade, maybe, the blind Fear that their wings hold The visible body expresses our Body as a whole, its Internal asymmetries, and also the broken Symmery we wander through With practice I might Regard people and things - the field Around me - as blots: objects For fantasy, shadowy but Legible. All these Words have other meanings. A little Written may be far too Much to read A while and a while and a while, after a While make something like forever From ontological bric-a-brac, and Without knowing quite what they Mean, I select my Four amba**adors: my Double, my shadow, my shining Covering, my name The graven names are not their Names, but ours Expectation, endlessly Engraved, is a question To beg. Blemishes on exposed Surfaces - perpetual Corrosion - enliven features Fastened to the stone Expecting nothing without Struggle, I come to expect nothing But struggle The primal Adam, our Archetype - light at his back, heavy Substance below him - glanced Down into uncertain depths, fell in Love with and fell Into his own shadow Legend or history: footprints Of pa**ing events. Lord How our information Increaseth I see only A surface - complex enough, its Interruptions of Deep blue - suggesting that the earth Is hollow, stretched around What must be all the rest My 'world' is parsimonious - a few Elements which Combine, like tricks of light, to Sketch the barest outline. But my Void is lavish, breaking Its frame, tempting me always to Turn again, again, for each Glimpse suggests more and more in some Other, farther emptiness To reach empty space, think Away each object - without destroying Its position. Ghostly then, with Contents gone, the Vacuum will not, as you Might expect, collapse, but Hang there Vacant, waiting an inrush of Reappointments seven times Worse than anything you know, seven other dimensions Curled into our three But time empties, on Occasion, more quickly than That. Breathe in or out. No Motion movies Trees go down, random and Planted, the Way we think The sacrificial animal is Consumed by fire, ascends in greasy Smoke, an offering To the sky. Earthly Refuse a**aults Heaven, as we are contaminated by Notions of eternity. It is as if A love letter - or everything I Have written - were to be Torn up and the pieces Scattered, in Order to reach the beloved No entrance after Sundown. Under how vast a Night, what we Call day What stands still is merely Extended - what Moves is in space Immobile figures, here, in a Race with d**h, gloom about their Heads like a dark nimbus Still, they do - while standing - Go: they've a motion Like the flow of water, like Ice, only slower. Our Time is a river, theirs The gla**y sea They drift, as We do, in this garden so swa*k, so grandly Indiscriminate. Frail Wings, fingers too fragile. Their faces Freckle, weathering Pure spirit, saith the Angelic Doctor. But not these Angels: pure visibility, hovering Lifting horror into the day To cancel and preserve it The worst d**h, worse Than d**h, would be to die, leaving Nothing unfinished Somewhere in my life, there Must have been - buried now under Long accumulation - some extreme Joy which, never spoken, cannot Be brought to mind. How else, in this Unconscious city, could I have Such a sense of dwelling? I would Raise... What's the opposite Of Ebenezer? Night, with its crypt, its Cradle-song. Rage For day's end: impatiance Like a boat in the evening. Towards The horizon, as Down a sounding line. Barcarolle Funeral march Nocturne at high noon