27 NOVEMBER 1993, Page 52

Angelic

His garden was filled with wings that summer.

There were birds and insects of all kinds and colours.

He did not, for months on end, hanker after angels.

In fact that wasn't so.

In all his summers, seasons, years, he never knew such ease.

And little has changed these days, (if one may speak of days).

The angels fly wild-goose-high; are mere V-flickering specks, faint hymning choruses, curving greyly into lightyears, on diverse, unearthly intervention. He sent her a photograph, saying, `This is a detail from an angel's wing.' It was beautiful, but came in fact from a butterfly.

He wanted to introduce the notion of transcendence. Ted Burford