Long After the Desert and the Donkey

   

                                                            (Gabriel to Mary)

And of what there would be no end

             —it came quickly. 

The wind runs loose, the air churns over us. 

No one remembers. 

But I remember, under the elm’s cool awning, 

watching you watch the clouds. 

Afternoons passed like afternoons, 

and I loved how dull you were. 

Given a bit of bark or the buzz 

of a bright green fly, you’d smile 

for hours. Sweet child, you’d go to anyone. 

You had no preferences. 

I remember the first time coming toward you, 

how solid you looked, sitting and twisting 

your dark hair against your neck. 

But you were not solid. 

From the first moment, when you breathed 

on my single lily, I saw 

where you felt it. 

From then on, I wanted to bend low and close 

to the curves of your ear. 

There were so many things I wanted to tell you. 

Or rather, 

I wished to have things that I wanted to tell you. 

What a thing, to be with you and have 

no words for it. What a thing, 

to be outcast like that. 

And then everything unfastened. 

It was like something was always dissolving 

inside you— 

Already it’s hard to remember 

how you used to comb your hair or how you 

tilted your broad face in green shade. 

Now what seas, what meanings 

can I place in you? 

Each night, I see you by the window— 

sometimes pressing your lips against a pear 

you do not eat. Each night, 

I see where you feel it: 

where there are no mysteries.



--Mary Szybist (1970- ), poet and professor, Winner of the National Book Award for Poetry for 2013, from Incarnadine, 2013

Image: Benedetto Gennari II, The Annunciation