Given the sad passing of music legend Sinead O'Connor, Raymond Ramcharitar has chosen to share his poem 'The Modern Angel – formerly known as Sinead O’Connor' in tribute. The poem originally appeared in Raymond's latest collection, Modern, Age, &c.
The Modern Angel – formerly known as Sinead O’Connor
by Raymond Ramcharitar
Beguiling, the shining heart-shaped face, the dreamy
Eyes, the tawny hair, bristling, skull-short,
But eclipsed by the voice, belting out a steamy
“Nothing compares to u,”—a bluesy retort
To love, that its power over you was strong
But not complete: you would sometimes lose your way
But find it again, and that beautiful tongue
Would find different sounds and music to say
Those words that waken gold in the bluest heart—
It was that voice that brought me another world
As I listened on an island, a world apart,
Where love was ruthlessly carnal; a story told
By slack-mouthed mummers, satyrs in crude disguise
Whose weapon was vice, whose quest to de-civilise.
*
But more than the song: the sight of the fierce Angel
Who scaled the modern Babel to glare at God,
Reminding him of the innocence of the manger
And its chief strangler: the vicar of his synod,
Whose picture you ripped asunder as the world gasped
At televised heresy, but refused to see
Beyond the unbent knee, the Papal clasp
That sealed the truth of Christ on earth: misery.
The Christian veneer of worldliness cracked
And its saints promised ecstatic violence
To spank, and smack and kick your ass, for attacking
The stony fortress of innocent suffering’s silence,
Certain their blood-stained hassocks would be cleaned
In the holy laundry of the Magdalene.
*
The laity believe their angels are made
Of heavenly substance: their skin ethereal,
Bodies bathed in halo that will never fade,
And minds of magical material
That grosser creatures cannot discern. But no:
When they lay down the flaming sword and shield
Angels are fragile beings who do not know
The things the world, and its god, choose to conceal.
They have children, whom they love, and fail and lose.
They, who in battle, can see with blazing sight, are blind
To the slow unraveling of the restless mind.
They see the angry blemish as a bruise
And not a cancer, and sometimes try to barter
With fate, who, as they fade, makes a martyr.
*
It’s been decades since that starry face first stared
Accusingly through the television screen.
There’ve been husbands, children, a scrappy career.
The Church in Rome’s been judged and found obscene,
Accusing eyes are everywhere, and anger’s
The millennial lingua franca. The restless mind
Is soothed by drugs, and thought to be a danger
To its owner. The revolution’s been refined,
And you’ve been redefined: Sinead’s Shuhada;
The plot has changed from crusade to intifada
And now your halo’s eclipsed by a dark cloth;
A star has taken a moon to plight her troth.
Seeking the blaze of an unknowable father,
O Angel of Light, you have become a moth.
