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Long before I knew who Walter Benjamin was, I knew about the angel of history he had up on his wall that made him write. More or less. "History is an angel being blown. Backwards. Into the future. History is a pile of debris. The angel wants to go back. And fix things. To repair the things that have been broken. But there's a storm brewing in paradise. And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards. Into the future. And this storm, this storm. Is called. Progress." I'm writing that under dictation. From the traces of “Strange Angels” that I find without too much trouble in my head. When I was young, I loved that song. That album. One summer, at a summer program for the gifted and otherwise engaged, several among us would sit out on the lawn. Or the soccer field. Or whatever sizable plane of grass it was after sunset. Look up at the stars. And, really, with this bunch, there was no effort to be profound. Just pleasure at being together. I wonder where they are now. We’d giggle and chat and discuss. A couple among us were some kinda lovers. I was the only gay. So no lover. Just longing. And friends. We’d listen to music. And tell surrealist jokes without a punch-line and laugh. Laurie Anderson. Mainly. Oh! And Cat Stevens. Bob Marley. Funny fragments of mix tapes coming to my mind. I think Laurie was my favourite. Before I knew that at a not all so long ago Antony concert she apologized for Lou’s stepping on your foot.

I guess Merrill’s supernatural entities are described as something a bit more sophisticated than angels. If I’ve understood correctly, it all has to do with the atom. God is God B in Mirabell. B for biology. Which is pretty cool. I mean as long as you’re going to place all of your doubt and love and poetic security on the line and open yourself and a few chosen living and dead friends up to a cosmos that you gain access to by, as far as I can tell, sheer aesthetic gall. Might as well call your deity biology. Study of life. Seems to me these days that it’s the aesthetic part of that gall I have trouble mustering up. Not that aesthetics aren’t my concern. Au contraire. The moments I find myself loving are the ones like the one you cite. Where he articulates the fact that it’s beyond him. And that that’s the most important thing. To articulate. Its being beyond articulation. Or where God B’s minions, Ephraim et al, give JM new access to where he is and who he’s with. Like, p. 253 of Mirabell, the consecration they get from an entity numbered 741. Where what they're up to is recognized as THE FIELD...FORMED BY LONGSTANDING EXPERIENCE. To which JM and DJ, flustered by the complement, reply: "DJ's and mine?" 741 answers:

YES/ A FIELD OF STILLD COMPLAINTS EARTH-RICH IN TRUST & EAGERNESS

JM replies:

"Listen--how in his words the furrowed sea/Contracts to a hillside plot the sailor plows."

I mean if the Ouija board gives you access to that, I’m all for it. And I mostly love the remarkable insouciance. The way he and DJ poke the angels. And the way they poke back.

Speaking of angels. Like I said. I'm off to see some tonight. In Polish! Mustn't be late. Who knows what 80's America looks like in the hands of 2000's post-communist Polish. Promising splice. Will let you know what it offers.