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

Here, There Are Blueberries

When I see the bright clouds, a sky empty of moon and stars,
I wonder what I am, that anyone should note me.

Here there are blueberries, what should I fear?
Here there is bread in thick slices, of whom should I be afraid?

Under the swelling clouds, we spread our blankets.
Here in this meadow, we open our baskets

to unpack blueberries, whole bowls of them,
berries not by the work of our hands, berries not by the work of our fingers.

what taste the bright world has, whole fields
without wires, the blackened moss, the clouds

swelling at the edges of the meadow. And for this,
I did nothing, not even wonder.

You must live for something, they say.
People don’t live just to keep on living.

But here is the quince tree, a sky bright and empty.
Here there are blueberries, there is no need to note me.

-- Mary Szybist (1970- ), from Incarnadine (Graywolf Press, 2013).

Photo not mine, from shutterstock.

Annunciation as Fender's Blue Butterfly with Kincaid's Lupine

The endangered Fender’s blue butterfly

associates, not with common lupines,

but with the very rare Kincaid’s lupine.

—NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY OF OREGON

But if I were this thing,
my mind a thousand times smaller than my wings,

if my fluorescent blue flutter
finally stumbled

into the soft
aqua throats of the blossoms,

if I lost my hunger
for anything else

I’d do the same. I’d fasten myself
to the touch of the flower.

So what if the milky rims of my wings
no longer stupefied

the sky? If I could
bind myself to this moment, to the slow

snare of its scent,
what would it matter if I became

just the flutter of page
in a text someone turns

to examine me
in the wrong color?

-- Mary Szybist (1970- ), from Incarnadine, 2013 (National Book Award winner)

Images: top, from Oregon State University, pair of Fender's blue butterflies on Kincaid's Lupine; bottom, photo by Dana Ross, published by the Xerces Society. Fender's Blue butterfly is endangered; its habutat now consists of two small pockets of prairie in the Willamette Valley in Oregon that has the lupine on which it lays its eggs excusively.

Annunciation (From the Grass Beneath Them)

how many moments did it hover before we felt

it was like nothing else, it was not bird

light as a mosquito, the aroma of walnut husks

while the girl's knees pressed into us

every spear of us rising, sunlit and coarse

the wild bees murmuring through

what did you feel when it was almost upon us when

even the shadow her chin made

never touched but reached just past

the crushed mint, the clover clustered between us

how cool would you say it was

still cool from the clouds

how itchy the air

the girl tilted and lurched and then

 we rose up to it. held ourselves tight

when it skimmed just the tips of our blades

didn't you feel softened

no, not even its flickering light trembled


-- Mary Szybist (1970- ), from Incarnadine, 2013 (National Book Award winner)


Image: The Annunciation (Evangelismos), orthodox icon from the Church Mueum of the Bishopry of Thessaloniki, 1825, anonymous