The Angel Coast or Unexpected Gold

Bright heaven has let down her guard

And falls be-dazzled on the winter sea

The torrent breakers grey and wild

Erupt in scintillating cries of light

Bright platinum flashing white and

flecked with unexpected gold.

How came this glorious gift

To such a cold stone shore?

The whitening chalk cliffs, tender

Honoured yet, breathe phantom like

and mute

Beside excoriating power volcanic

Bursting from the home of light

In unrelenting bliss.

Kiss now our homely earth

And fling your star falls in the lucid air

As throngs of birds in undulating joy

Pitch up

and fall and

Rise again

Against the anguish of the blistering gales

Leaving with the myriad plays of light.

Lightless birds, heightening the air with cries

Fine soundings of an infinite wealth of time and turning space

frothed and breakered

in the drenching roar of sound

out, far beyond the realm of all our pinpoint shore-bound

possibility

this too much turmoil of unmeasurable beauty

pierces forth in

unreciprocal power.

Unending and unbearable glory

tears and sweeps away

the last of all my heart’s defences

And all this so

unmeasured glory

enters in.

Sarah de Nordwall October 27^th 2002