Mused Mary in Old Age

   

The lengthening shadows of the cedar trees

Have blended into twilight, and the sun 

Has plunged in glorious gold precipitance 

Beyond the dim crest of the western hills, 

Bearing with it the day’s disquietudes; 

And now the stars, that lamp the feet of God, 

Are lighted, and night’s purple silences 

Steal gently round me fraught with memories. 

’Twas such an hour as this—long, long ago 

Yet seeming yesterday—he came to me, 

My little son, in joyous travail born 

Out there across the hills in Bethlehem, 

Where we who journeyed southward to be taxed— 

Strangers in our own father’s land—had found 

No shelter in the crowded khan, and shared, 

Perforce, a grotto with the stabled kine. 

 Ah, how it all comes back again to me! 

The courtyard, in the flickering torchlight, filled 

With huddled trav’lers sleeping ’neath the sky, 

The kneeling camels of a caravan, 

The patient asses dozing by the wall, 

A smell of roasting meat at little fires, 

The shouts of melon-sellers, the low drone 

Of reverend elders bending at their prayers, 

Barking of street-dogs, porters’ blasphemies, 

The laughter of a girl, the mellow flute 

Of some rapt lover, and the tinkling tune 

Of sheep-bells forward moving through the dark.

And then the hour supreme, wherein my soul 

Clomb the dark pinnacles of pain, and death 

Grappled with life through whirling aeoned years,

But fled at length and left the Miracle. 

 They laid him there beside me on the hay, 

A wee pink being in his world’s first sleep; 

My arm was round about him and his breath 

Was warm with life on my exultant breast, 

And they whose winged watch is set to keep 

Ward in the valley lands of heaven looked down,

Not up, that night to find their paradise. 

All weak with labor and soul’s happiness, 

I lay beneath the sapphire tent of skies, 

And in my heart I made a little prayer 

Of thanks that flew up to the throne of God 

On swift dove pinions of unuttered song; 

And as I prayed, lo, upon loops of stars 

Night’s velvet curtainings were lifted up, 

A wondrous light turned all the world to rose, 

And down the skies swept singing seraphim 

In mighty echoes of my little prayer. 

Oh, can it be that threescore years have marched 

In troubled caravan across the waste 

Of desert life since then, and can it be 

That I, who sit here in mine eventide, 

White with the snows of sorrow and of time,

Was once a bright tressed girl who heard the choirs 

Of heaven rejoice that she had borne a son? 

Why, I can feel that little heart beat still 

Close to my own, the touch of little hands 

Warm and caressing on this withered breast; 

Still I can hear the first low wail that marked 

His woe’s beginning and the tortured path 

That he should tread in mighty gentleness, 

With pain and anguish, ’til his love supreme 

And terrible meekness, overcoming death, 

Should lead him conqueror to sit with God, 

Pleading for sinful men in paradise. 

Today I stole into the synagogue 

And heard a rabbi read the sacred scroll: 

How that my lord, Isaiah, said of old, 

Thy Maker is thy husband, he hath called thee 

As a forsaken woman, spirit grieved; 

God, for a little moment, hides his face 

From thee, but with his loving kindness soon 

And tender mercies shall he gather thee. 

Then was I comforted, and peace displaced 

The turmoil in my heart, and minded me 

Of that great promise Gabriel bore from God 

And the immeasurable fruitage of his word, 

The life and death and glory of my son. 

 So in the shades of life and night I sit, 

Under the sheltering arbor of the dark 

That curves above, vined o’er with trellised stars, 

Waiting my spirit bridegroom, and the sound 

Of that loved voice—long silent save in dreams— 

Calling across the vibrant firmament, 

O Mary, Mother Mary, come to Me.

-- George M. P. Baird (1887-1970), American poet, professor, and civil servant

Image: The Virgin Mary in Old Age, by James Tissot

Sunset on Calvary

Now gooth sunne under wode:
Me reweth, Marye, thy faire rode.
Now gooth sunne under tree:
Me reweth, Marye, thy sone and thee.

-- anonymous, written in Middle English

Now goes the sun under wood;
I rue, Mary, thy fair face.
Now goes the sun under the tree;
I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.

--Modern translation (Leland Ryken)

Expansive language Magnificat

 And Mary said,

My soul overflows with your greatness, O Adonai;

        My spirit rejoices in you, O Savior of All the Nations!
For the light of your countenance has dawned over me
        despite my humble state.
From now and throughout eternity
        even those yet born will call me Blessed
                and sing of the great things you have done for me,

                exulting in the holiness of your Name.

You pour out your mercy on those who stand in awe of you
        those who revere you,
                from ages untold to ages yet to come.

Your strong arm shields the humble
        and levels the proud in their isolating conceit.
You have razed the thrones of those who rule by might
        while setting the lowly and gentle upon seats of honor.
You have satisfied the hungry with abundant delights
        while giving the rich a begging bowl, 

        sending them away empty-handed.
You have come to the aid of your people unfailingly
        fulfilling your promises to our ancestors,
                to the children of Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham forever,

                standing among us from time immemorial.

(reimagined LBS)

Mused Mary in Old Age

The lengthening shadows of the cedar trees

Have blended into twilight, and the sun 

Has plunged in glorious gold precipitance 

Beyond the dim crest of the western hills, 

Bearing with it the day’s disquietudes; 

And now the stars, that lamp the feet of God, 

Are lighted, and night’s purple silences 

Steal gently round me fraught with memories. 

’Twas such an hour as this—long, long ago 

Yet seeming yesterday—he came to me, 

My little son, in joyous travail born 

Out there across the hills in Bethlehem, 

Were we who journeyed southward to be taxed— 

Strangers in our own father’s land—had found 

No shelter in the crowded khan, and shared, 

Perforce, a grotto with the stabled kine. 

Ah, how it all comes back again to me! 

The courtyard, in the flickering torchlight, filled 

With huddled trav’lers sleeping ’neath the sky, 

The kneeling camels of a caravan, 

The patient asses dozing by the wall, 

A smell of roasting meat at little fires, 

The shouts of melon-sellers, the low drone 

Of reverend elders bending at their prayers, 

Barking of street-dogs, porters’ blasphemies, 

The laughter of a girl, the mellow flute 

Of some rapt lover, and the tinkling tune 

Of sheep-bells forward moving through the dark. 

And then the hour supreme, wherein my soul 

Clomb the dark pinnacles of pain, and death 

Grappled with life through whirling aeoned years, 

But fled at length and left the Miracle. 

They laid him there beside me on the hay, 

A wee pink being in his world’s first sleep; 

My arm was round about him and his breath 

Was warm with life on my exultant breast, 

And they whose winged watch is set to keep 

Ward in the valley lands of heaven looked down, 

Not up, that night to find their paradise. 

All weak with labor and soul’s happiness, 

I lay beneath the sapphire tent of skies, 

And in my heart I made a little prayer 

Of thanks that flew up to the throne of God 

On swift dove pinions of unuttered song; 

And as I prayed, lo, upon loops of stars 

Night’s velvet curtainings were lifted up, 

A wondrous light turned all the world to rose, 

And down the skies swept singing seraphim 

In mighty echoes of my little prayer. 

Oh, can it be that threescore years have marched 

In troubled caravan across the waste 

Of desert life since then, and can it be 

That I, who sit here in mine eventide, 

White with the snows of sorrow and of time, 

Was once a bright tressed girl who heard the choirs 

Of heaven rejoice that she had borne a son? 

Why, I can feel that little heart beat still 

Close to my own, the touch of little hands 

Warm and caressing on this withered breast; 

Still I can hear the first low wail that marked 

His woe’s beginning and the tortured path 

That he should tread in mighty gentleness, 

With pain and anguish, ’til his love supreme 

And terrible meekness, overcoming death, 

Should lead him conqueror to sit with God, 

Pleading for sinful men in paradise. 

Today I stole into the synagogue 

And heard a rabbi read the sacred scroll: 

How that my lord, Isaiah, said of old, 

Thy Maker is thy husband, he hath called thee 

As a forsaken woman, spirit grieved; 

God, for a little moment, hides his face 

From thee, but with his loving kindness soon 

And tender mercies shall he gather thee. 

Then was I comforted, and peace displaced 

The turmoil in my heart, and minded me 

Of that great promise Gabriel bore from God 

And the immeasurable fruitage of his word, 

The life and death and glory of my son. 

 So in the shades of life and night I sit, 

Under the sheltering arbor of the dark 

That curves above, vined o’er with trellised stars, 

Waiting my spirit bridegroom, and the sound 

Of that loved voice—long silent save in dreams— 

Calling across the vibrant firmament, 

O Mary, Mother Mary, come to Me.


--George M. P. Baird (1887-1970), American poet, theatre professor, and civil servant, from his book 'Prentice Songs, 1913.

Image: The Virgin Mary in Old Age, James Tissot

The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window

Because my will is simple as a window
And knows no pride of original birth,
It is my life to die, like glass, by light:
Slain in the strong rays of the bridegroom sun.

Because my love is simple as a window
And knows no shame of original dust,
I longed all night, (when I was visible) for dawn my death:
When I would marry day, my Holy Spirit:
And die by transsubstantiation into light.

For light, my lover, steals my life in secret.
I vanish into day, and leave no shadow
But the geometry of my cross,
Whose frame and structure are the strength
By which I die, but only to the earth,
And am uplifted to the sky my life. 

When I became the substance of my lover,
(Being obedient, sinless glass)
I love all things that need my lover's life,
And live to give my newborn Morning to your quiet rooms,
-Your rooms, that would be tombs,
Or vaults of night, and death, and terror,
Fill with the clarity of living Heaven,
Shine with the rays of God's Jerusalem:
O shine, bright Sions! 

Because I die by brightness and the Holy Spirit,
The sun rejoices in your jail, my kneeling Christian,
(Where even now you weep and grin
To learn, from my simplicity, the strength of faith). 

Therefore do not be troubled at the judgements of the thunder,
Stay still and pray, still stay, my other son,
And do not fear the armies and black ramparts
Of the advancing and retreating rains:
I'll let no lightning kill your room's white order. 

Although it is the day's last hour,
Look with no fear:
For the torn storm lets in, at the world's rim,
Three streaming rays as straight as Jacob's ladder:

And you shall see the sun, my Son, my Substance,
Come to convince the world of the day's end, and of the night,
Smile to the lovers of the day in smiles of blood;
For though my love, He'll be their Brother,
My light - the Lamb of their Apocalypse.

-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968), American Trappist monk and priest, memoirist, writer, and contemplative

The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin is August 15,

The Annunciation

Ashes of paper, ashes of a world
Wandering, when fire is done:
We argue with the drops of rain!

Until one comes Who walks unseen
Even in elements we have destroyed.
Deeper than any nerve
He enters flesh and bone.
Planting His truth, He puts our substance on.
Air, earth, and rain
Rework the frame that fire has ruined.
What was dead is waiting for His Flame.
Sparks of His Spirit spend their seeds, and hide
To grow like irises, born before summertime.
These blue thinas bud in Israel.

The girl prays by the bare wall
Between the lamp and the chair.
(Framed with an angel in our galleries
She has a richer painted room, sometimes a crown.
Yet seven pillars of obscurity
Build her to Wisdom’s house, and Ark, and Tower.
She is the Secret of another Testament
She owns their manna in her jar.)

Fifteen years old -
The flowers printed on her dress
Cease moving in the middle of her prayer
When God, Who sends the messenger,
Meets His messenger in her Heart.
Her answer, between breath and breath,
Wrings from her innocence our Sacrament!
In her white body God becomes our Bread.

It is her tenderness
Heats the dead world like David on his bed.
Times that were too soon criminal
And never wanted to be normal
Evade the beast that has pursued
You, me and Adam out of Eden’s wood.
Suddenly we find ourselves assembled
Cured and recollected under several green trees.

Her prudence wrestled with the Dove
To hide us in His cloud of steel and silver:
These are the mysteries of her Son.
And here my heart, a purchased outlaw,
Prays in her possession
Until her Jesus makes my heart
Smile like a flower in her blameless hand.


--Thomas Merton (Father Louis) (1915-1968) American convert to Catholicism, Trappist monk, poet and spiritual author. 

Aubade: The Annunciation

When the dim light, at Lauds, comes strike her window,
Bellsong falls out of Heaven with a sound of glass.

Prayers fly in the mind like larks,
Thoughts hide in the height like hawks:
And while the country churches tell their blessings to the distance,
Her slow words move
(Like summer winds the wheat) her innocent love:
Desires glitter in her mind
Like morning stars:

Until her name is suddenly spoken
Like a meteor falling.

She can no longer hear shrill day
Sing in the east,
Nor see the lovely woods begin to toss their manes.
The rivers have begun to sing.
The little clouds shine in the sky like girls:
She has no eyes to see their faces.

Speech of an angel shines in the waters of her thought
like diamonds,
Rides like a sunburst on the hillsides of her heart.

And is brought home like harvests,
Hid in her house, and stored
Like the sweet summer’s riches in our peaceful barns.

But in the world of March outside her dwelling,
The farmers and the planters
Fear to begin their sowing, and its lengthy labor,
Where, on the brown, bare furrows,
The winter wind still croons as dumb as pain.


-- Thomas Merton (Father Louis) (1915-1968)- American convert to Catholicism, Trappist monk, poet and spiritual author. An aubade is a French dawn poem. Today is the Feast of the Annunciation-- 9 month before Christmas.

The Passion of Our Lady

For the past three days she had been wandering, and following.
She followed the people.
She followed the events.
She seemed to be following a funeral.
But it was a living man’s funeral.
She followed like a follower.
Like a servant.
Like a weeper at a Roman funeral.
As if it had been her only occupation.
To weep.
That is what he had done to his mother.
Since the day when he had begun his mission.
You saw her everywhere.
With the people and a little apart from the people.
Under the porticoes, under the arcades, in drafty places.
In the temples, in the palaces.
In the streets.
In the yards and in the back-yards.
And she had also gone up to Calvary.
She too had climbed up Calvary.
A very steep hill.
And she did not even feel that she was walking.
She did not even feel that her feet were carrying her.
She too had gone up her Calvary.
She too had gone up and up
In the general confusion, lagging a little behind...
She wept and wept under a big linen veil.
A big blue veil.
A little faded.
She wept as will never be granted to a woman to weep.
As it will never be asked
Of a woman to weep on this earth.
Never at any time.
What was very strange was that everyone respected her.
People greatly respect the parents of the condemned.
They even said: Poor woman.
And at the same time they struck at her son.
Because man is like that.
The world is like that.
Men are what they are and you never can change them.
She did not know that, on the contrary, he had come to change man.
That he had come to change the world.
She followed and wept.
Everybody respected her.
Everybody pitied her.
They said: Poor woman.
Because they weren’t bad at heart.
They fulfilled the Scriptures.
They honored, respected, and admired her grief.
They didn’t make her go away,
they pushed her back only a little with special attentions
Because she was the mother of the condemned.
They thought: It’s the family of the condemned.
They even said so in a low voice.
They said it among themselves
With a secret admiration.

She followed and wept, and didn’t understand very well.
But she understood quite well that the government was against her boy.
And that is a very bad business.
She understood that all the governments were together against her boy.
The government of the Jews and the government of the Romans.
The government of judges and the government of priests.
The government of soldiers and the government of parsons.
He could never get out of it.
Certainly not.
What was strange was that all derision was heaped on him.
Not on her at all.
There was only respect for her.
For her grief.
They didn’t insult her.
On the contrary.
People even refrained from looking at her too much.
All the more to respect her.
So she too had gone up.
Gone up with everybody else.
Up to the very top of the hill.
Without even being aware of it.
Her legs had carried her and she did not even know it.
She too had made the Way of the Cross.
The fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross.
Were there fourteen stations?
Were there really fourteen stations?
She didn’t know for sure.
She couldn’t remember.
Yet she had not missed one.
She was sure of that.
But you can always make a mistake.
In moments like that your head swims.
Everybody was against him.
Everybody wanted him to die.
It is strange.
People who are not usually together.
The government and the people.
That was awful luck.
When you have someone for you and someone against you,
sometimes you can get out of it.
You can scramble out of it.
But he wouldn’t.
Certainly he wouldn’t.
When you have everyone against you.
But what had he done to everyone?

I’ll tell you.
He had saved the world.

--Charles Peguy (1873-1914), French poet, essayist, journalist, and editor, Socialist and fervent Roman Catholic, who died at the Battle of the Marne Translated from the French by Julian Green.

Mary's Word (Feast of the Annunciation)

With a sound of distant thunder

the rainbow-eyed stranger
spoke to me. She
called me “favored one,”
and that made me stop in mid-step.
Just this morning I’d been
a beast of burden hauling water
for the entire household
so that my soon-to-be mother-in-law
could weigh again the bargain that had been struck
for my labor, present and future.
I could still hear my father
walking away, his pockets jingling,
the matter settled.

“Favored one.”

And for once in my life
now I was presented a proposal,
just as a dove slid down
a shaft of sunlight, revealing
lilies in the ditch,
more radiant than Solomon
in his rumored glory.

No fool, at first
I didn’t speak, much less
laugh, but
hurried home.

She appeared again
as I was spinning flax into thread--
poppies nodding at her feet,
the lilies this time an offering
shoulders shadowed
beneath star-flecked wings
flexed half-open, ready to depart or remain
at my response.

The frosted fields had just begun to green
after winter’s bony grip slackened, yet
the sweet smell of honeysuckle
and rose swirled improbably (only
in my mind?)
with each incredible word
that pulled the tides of my
presumed future moon-ward:
favored by God,
a son with a name like
light and breath.
Unconditional love,
conditional to human consent.

“Who am I
to contain such grace?” My
heart filled with wonder, mind
reeling with choices that I’d never
held in my grasp before. It was
the kindness there, the honor
that gleamed in the angel’s eyes
that rose over the tattoo of my heart
and tempered wonder to resolve.

The choice was mine to make.

The gates of my assent swung wide.

I startled myself
with the sureness of that leap within
my heart. Yes
to bearing the joy, the questions and pain, yes
to Eternity enclosed and growing
beneath my heart’s tempest and flame,
yet my spirit also hovered as if afloat
on the breath of God
who enters only after
my offered “yes”
--THAT was the Word made flesh.

The pulse within me responded,
I am
the hand
maid of
the Lord
Most High.

Before words formed on my lips,
before the spindle fell
from tingling fingers
and I sighed the song
that would frame my life
and burst loose the narrow orbit
I had once inhabited.

Jesus
Jesus
Jesus

In that instant, I knew too
he would be my son, yet
never mine alone.

Assent brought ascent. My eyes raised
to sizzled rasp of receding wingbeat;
the eddied air swirled and reeled.
The messenger departed
bearing my gift
after she nodded and rose, leaving me
this first treasure of many
for the storehouse of my heart.




© 2022 Leslie Barnes Scoopmire- all rights reserved.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 24, 2022-- the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation.

Image: "The Annunciation," John William Waterhouse (British/Italian), 1914.

Mater Misericordiae

We'll say the calendar made us feel
at home when your parents ask

how we like the latest doctor. Hanging

on the lobby's wall above Peoples

and Cosmos, Mary held her arms open

in a gesture of welcome with a rosary

resting on her girlish, upturned wrists.

You pointed her out when they took you

for that day's blood draw and set

of unanswered questions. You knew

I'd like the mundane transgression

of Mary presiding over the secular

saeculorum of the place. Although

I've never loved the doves and roses,

the cherubs pinching the hem

of her blue robe, she kept my mind off

the results, the pills, the commercials

for antidepressants circling every half hour

on the closed circuit. After you vanished

into the back, I lifted the calendar from

its nail and thumbed through the other Marys:

a stylish Guadalupe radiating needles

for October, Michaelangelo's marble

framed in the corpse of Christ for March,

and a small woman marveling at her own

miraculous infant in December. Seeing her

going through it too, month after month

praising and lamenting no matter what

went on in the boxes beneath her,

helped for a minute. When I hung her back,

I noticed she'd been stuck in May

this whole summer. I flipped ahead

to August. Titian's assumption.

The mother of God drifts out of sight

in surprise, with the terrified apostles below.

--Joshua Jones, from Image magazine, no 107, pp. 79-80.

Image: Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, 1516-1518, altarpiece panel painting

The Annunciation

Starts with a stream of gold that’s ridden
      by a relentlessly linear dove,
ready to pierce a young girl’s head.

            Then, her face, her gaze looking up, out
past the easel and later, past the frame,
      eyes raised as if to ask a question. Take

the virgin robe, for instance, which van Eyck has made
      to fall luxuriously as a second chance
across the old storyline etched below her.

            And, further down, the church’s intricately
strict apse, each floorboard, painstaked as lace, showing here,
      David’s lesson in beheading, there Samson’s

tearing down the temple—that history
            interrupted by her silken, layered folds:
each blue built up from perfecting the oil.

            His favorite signature, “As best I can”
or “As I was able, but not just as I wished.”
      Imagine the endless effort: a man

in the distance, deep in the could have been,
      who sat before the easel, hours, perhaps,
past his patience for lasting regrets,

            flat refusals—the quick-drying water-based
attempts flung around a room.
      And how, alone with pigment barrels, chamber pots,

the canvasses stretched, the fire exhumed,
      he poured a stream of oil back and forth,
watching it catch the light, change a wooden bowl.

            For the sake of making the mundane
seem to marry the mysterious,
      her eyes raised—lacquered, slippery wells, caught—

her startled acceptance. Since it’s her choosing
      to be chosen that mattered, largest figure
in the frame, the virgin form layered

            with gold light, blue, her pale hands open
for the god imagined sick with thin horizon,
      and ready to enter thickness now, the body’s

blood, gristle, vertebrae, whorled fingerprint.
      The oil spread back and forth. His wrist stiffened.
“As I was able, but not just as I wished.”

            So, out to pay the right kind of attention
to detail, as if, in the lengthening
      carelessness of cracked roads leading away

from his town, beneath a matted pulp
      of the year’s leaves, he wished he could hear
silence taking shape: a weed, say, starting

            to split the surface, part vegetal
altar and example of dumb, green change.
      Or, say, through the window, a flock of geese

receding, advancing, by turns, as the sky’s gray
      sometimes meets the double strength gray of sea,
he might have looked between the shapes,

            their invisible lines blooded, some racing ahead,
others falling behind, each filling in, quickly,
      empty spaces where the wings once beat.

And still, she looks up, asking to be entered.
      So that if she turned away from shadows, wood panels,
chamber pots, winter coats lined against the wall,

            he might have looked so far into the difficult
that he finally could believe: behind her gaze,
      beneath her brow, under the layers of

shell, salt, finally skin-white, lay the mind
      of a mother giving birth to a father
and a son, the flesh—a color, an instant, spared.

-- Pimone Triplett, poet and professor, from Ruining the Picture.

Image: The Annunciation, by Jan Van Eyck 

Take A World

 

                     The Annunciation by Jan Van Eyck, 1434–36

Take a world in which each flower’s an Easter lily
and books chivvy open to the place where our names leap.
Then step into the temple where Mary,

gown belled like a Christmas tree angel’s,
speaks with a real one. Their hands negotiate:
Mary is asking why light curls to ribbony rainbow

on the angel’s back while through her own body
it shoots in stiff gold arrows. The angel nods, grins.
Nothing more gorgeous than their drapery-softened

gesticulation, the room’s blue-propped lilies
and plump ottoman. It’s enough to make us think
they’re standing in the world, two women alert

to the heft of their clothes as Mary asks,
“Who, me?”, her eyes sliding sideways to her painter,
master of distraction. She can’t see Jehovah

behind her, his one blazing window, though we can,
we see the room’s whole depth falling into light
as we wait for someone not transfixed by dilemma

who’s standing where we are. As we wait for Joseph.

--Terri Witek (1952- ), American poet, from Fools and Crows.

Waiting for the Revolution

If love is ‘the bright foreigner’,* then here’s
    not Amour himself but still
a follower afire, his wings a blend
    of peacock and rainbow, the pearled cope
blooming to crimson on its ground of gold,
    his hair a downspill from the lock
of a coronet badged with jewels, the fingered sceptre
    a rod of crystal, and the smile
something they practise in another country.

This is not wasted on the woman who,
    her hands come up from the shell of a robe
which seems to have been steeped in ocean when
    darkness and light were still contending,
gazes now from the blaze of being at
    van Eyck, the Duke of Burgundy,
a Tsar made out of ice and marble, or
    whoever gives the alms of an hour
in minute-hungry fuming Washington.

Outside, a beat or two of an angel’s wings
    away on the Capitol is Freedom,
one of the later products of the Bronze
    Age, equipped with shield and sword,
a wreath for some earthly use or other, plumes,
    an eagle-crested helmet. She eyes
the status quo from her eminence and murmurs,
    ‘The past is prologue’, a Delphic saying
which she construes as ‘blessed are those in possession’.

I have been in and out of the world worlds,
    amphibious and double-hearted,
and still am. The shimmer of July
    speaks now for a perpetual
immobility, bronzing the will. The pavement
    beneath woman and angel shows
Goliath down and done with, Samson at grips
    with a sheltering enslaving place:
and for some want of the white bird of esprit

that plunges goldrayed into the woman’s mind,
    I’m in the middle. They say that she
has her consent to the revolution printed
    upside down for easier reading
in heaven. It may be so, but I’m guessing that
    the words in their reversal figure
a world swung round upon its axis, the all-
    clear given to those in quest
of the bright foreigner who lightens angels.

--Peter Steele (1939-2012) Australian Jesuit and poet.

Posted on the day armed right-wing supremacists attacked the US Capitol during an insurrection fomented by President Trump.

Van Eyck's painting is in the National Gallery in Washington DC, not far from the US capitol, topped by a statue depicting Victorious Freedom.

*"Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self." from a journal entry in 1849 by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Hail

Mary who mattered to me, gone or asleep
among fruits, spilled
in ash, in dust, I did not
leave you.
Even now I can’t keep from
composing you, limbs and blue cloak
and soft hands. I sleep to the sound
of your name, I say there is no Mary
except the word Mary, no trace
on the dust of my pillowslip. I only
dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,
of honeybees above you
murmuring into a crown. Antique queen,
the night dreams on: here are the pears
I have washed for you, here the heavy-winged doves,
asleep by the hyacinths. Here I am,
having bathed carefully in the syllables
of your name, in the air and the sea of them, the sharp scent
of their sea foam. What is the matter with me?
Mary, what word, what dust
can I look behind? I carried you a long way
into my mirror, believing you would carry me
back out. Mary, I am still 

for you, I am still a numbness for you.

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

Image: Leonardo DaVinci, The Annunciation, 1472

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

Cana, or Not a Perfect Carpenter

"They have no wine."-- John 2:3 
"Like us in all things but sin."-- Hebrews 4:15 

It had to come from somewhere. Expectations 
have histories. Out of the blue one does 
not say, “They have no wine,” as though 
remarking on the gathering of the clouds, or how 
late the spring this year. Surely she knew 
before she came. Had he bent more 
than nails, as he hammered the oak plank, 
cut too short for the table top,

and turning to be sure the door was closed, 
had he, in a stolen moment, lengthen
it an inch or two, a quick 
impatient wonder to cover his mistake?

But through the lattice, had she seen, 
smiled and understood. Had she asked 
him to build a porch with beams from Lebanon, 
where she could catch the breeze, watch

the sun go down? Then as the hard 
wood rafters began to drop, 
did he twist the law of gravity, put 
a kink in the path of falling timbers?

And did she duck – and marvel?

-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB (1921- ), American monk, poet, and theologian at St. John's Abbey.

Relevant Scripture, John 2:1-11, 2nd after Epiphany C

In the Kitchen

('In the sixth month the angel Gabriel...' -Luke 1:26) 

Bellini has it wrong, 
I was not kneeling 
on my satin cushion, 
in a beam of light,
head slightly bent.

Painters always 
skew the scene, 
as though my life 
were wrapped in silks, 
in temple smells.

Actually, I had just 
come back from the well, 
placing the pitcher on the table 
I bumped against the edge, 
spilling water on the floor.

As I bent to wipe 
it up, there was a light 
against the kitchen wall, 
as though someone had opened 
the door to the sun.

Rag in hand, 
hair across my face, 
I turned to see 
who was entering, 
unannounced, unasked.

All I saw 
was light 
white against the timbers. 
A voice I've never 
heard greeted me,

said I was elected, would 
bear a son who'd reign 
forever. The spirit would 
overshadow me.
I stood afraid. 

Someone closed the door
and I dropped the rag.

-- Fr. Kilian McDonnell, OSB (1921- ), American monk, poet, and theologian at St. John's Abbey

Relevant Scripture: Luke 1:26-38