Written in November 1985 for the solo exhibition La nascita dell’angelo [The birth of the angel], Hetjens Museum, Düsseldorf, published posthumously in the exhibition catalogue, edited by E. Klinge, January 1986
To deny it action is to ‘pronounce’ on man.
If the sign is detached from the form, not even the shadow
with its parabolic trace can pronounce the object-man.
But between day and night, when the light of the sun is equivalent
to that of the moon, an unexpected thought has created the Angel.
Neither man nor ghost but Angel, who moves away quickly,
looking back as though wanting to leave a mark of his own passing.
His face, from the discontinuity of the moments, has not been recognised,
But the locks of hair have: in their place there are paper curls, boldly written.
The house was immobile there and its walls have captured that shadow that was passing.
I have brought works in terracotta to Düsseldorf, I have thought of them as fragments of the part of a wall indicated by that shadow.
Those clay bricks have been so transformed that in his future passing the Angel will not find walls but elements of a space very close to him.
