Tessa Ransford OBE, Hon.DUniv (Paisley), MA, Dip Ed Poetry Practitioner and Adviser

This is a poem I wrote in the 1970s trying to express the experience of creative work. Angel meaning messenger in Greek, an intermediary force between the vision and its expression or between the invisible and visible, implicit and explicit worlds. Agony means struggle or wrestling, which is also often involved in making things happen or appear. But the poem says what it says and should be understood as we can, each according to our own experience. AGONY OF ANGELS Undreamt dream remembered restoring what mind never knew: as memory and dream come to mind angels come true. Unwritten text discovered sounds of a language unheard: text and sounds translated by angel-word. Unceasing search and taste of experience empty, half-filled: the taste of a moment's perfection is angel-food. Opening wide and receiving yet narrowing down to the real: the narrowness of the highest angels reveal. Vision of inscape forcing free into canvas and paint: the angel-eye pierces through to the focal-point. Silent music is threading slowly through strings of the heart: and plucks the nerves of angels alive, alert. Parents of poems and poems born after labour alone: dark night with the angel until it is done. Chaos of world conflicting energies unrefined transformed into creation by angel-hand. Dance of the dream recaptured ecstasy made flesh: through the agony of angels: art is this.