Angels in America
By Tony Kushner

The Angel, who hangs from visible wires while visiting the earth. Here, her chosen prophet, Prior, has just decided to reject her prophecy and return to earth.

THE ANGEL:

You only think you want to return.
Life is a habit with you.
You have not seen what is to come:
We have:
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring?
That you or any Being should wish to endure them?
Death moves plenteous than all Heaven has tears to mourn it,
The slow dissolving of the Great Design,
The spiraling apart of the Work of Eternity,
The World and all its beautiful particle logic
All collapsed. All dead, forever,
In starless, moonlorn onyx night.

We are failing, failing,
The Earth and the Angels.
Look up, look up,
It is Not-to-Be Time.
Oh who asks of the Orders Blessing
With Apocalypse Descending?
Who demands: More Life?
When Death like a Protector
Blinds our eyes, shielding from tender nerve
More horror than can be borne.
Let any Being on whom Fortune smiles
Creep away to Death
Before that last dreadful daybreak
When all your ravaging returns to you
With the rising, scorching, unrelenting Sun:
When morning blisters crimson
And bears all life away,
A tidal wave of Protean Fire
That curls around the planet
And bares the Earth clean as bone.

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