My wing is ready for flight;
I would like to turn back.
If I stayed timeless time
I would have little luck.
Benjamin wrote as follows:
A Klee painting "Angelus Novus" shows us an angel
looking as though he is about to move away from
something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are
staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His
face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a
chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which
keeps piling whatever wreckage upon wreckage and hurls
it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay,
awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.
But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught
in his wings with such violence that the angel can no
longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels
him into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
This storm is what we call progress. (pp. 257-58).