Waiting for the Revolution

If love is ‘the bright foreigner’,* then here’s
    not Amour himself but still
a follower afire, his wings a blend
    of peacock and rainbow, the pearled cope
blooming to crimson on its ground of gold,
    his hair a downspill from the lock
of a coronet badged with jewels, the fingered sceptre
    a rod of crystal, and the smile
something they practise in another country.

This is not wasted on the woman who,
    her hands come up from the shell of a robe
which seems to have been steeped in ocean when
    darkness and light were still contending,
gazes now from the blaze of being at
    van Eyck, the Duke of Burgundy,
a Tsar made out of ice and marble, or
    whoever gives the alms of an hour
in minute-hungry fuming Washington.

Outside, a beat or two of an angel’s wings
    away on the Capitol is Freedom,
one of the later products of the Bronze
    Age, equipped with shield and sword,
a wreath for some earthly use or other, plumes,
    an eagle-crested helmet. She eyes
the status quo from her eminence and murmurs,
    ‘The past is prologue’, a Delphic saying
which she construes as ‘blessed are those in possession’.

I have been in and out of the world worlds,
    amphibious and double-hearted,
and still am. The shimmer of July
    speaks now for a perpetual
immobility, bronzing the will. The pavement
    beneath woman and angel shows
Goliath down and done with, Samson at grips
    with a sheltering enslaving place:
and for some want of the white bird of esprit

that plunges goldrayed into the woman’s mind,
    I’m in the middle. They say that she
has her consent to the revolution printed
    upside down for easier reading
in heaven. It may be so, but I’m guessing that
    the words in their reversal figure
a world swung round upon its axis, the all-
    clear given to those in quest
of the bright foreigner who lightens angels.

--Peter Steele (1939-2012) Australian Jesuit and poet.

Posted on the day armed right-wing supremacists attacked the US Capitol during an insurrection fomented by President Trump.

Van Eyck's painting is in the National Gallery in Washington DC, not far from the US capitol, topped by a statue depicting Victorious Freedom.

*"Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self." from a journal entry in 1849 by Ralph Waldo Emerson.