The Deliverance of St Peter
David Teniers the younger, c.1645
On one side of the massive door,
which stands unaccountably open,
the guards, so steeped in reality it hurts,
are playing dice, that means of transport from
reality into some other sphere of things,
where it’s the going away from that matters,
not the to to which you go. Meanwhile,
on the other side, St Peter has received
an angel who is inviting him to the tea shop
round the corner, or to heaven. From this
distance we can’t hear which; in any case
the angel is whispering in a special language
and there’s plenty of noise from the
rattling dice and the shouts of the guards.