THE  ANNUNCIATION

Poem for Today - Monday -  September 15, 2014

THE CESTELLO ANNUNCIATION

The angel has already said, Be not afraid.
He’s said, The power of the Most High

will darken you. Her eyes are downcast and half closed.

And there is a long pause – a pause here and forever –

as the angel crowds her. She backs away,

her left side pressed against the picture frame.

He kneels. He's come in all unearthly innocence

to tell her of glory—not knowing, not remembering

how terrible it is. And Botticelli

gives her eternity to turn, look out the doorway, where

on a far hill floats a castle, and halfway across

the river toward it juts a bridge, not completed

and neither is the touch, angel to virgin,

both her hands held up, both elegant, one raised

as if to say stop, while the other hand, the right one,

reaches toward his; and, as it does, it parts her blue robe

and reveals the concealed red of her inner garment

to the red tiles of the floor and the red folds

of the angel's robe. But her whole body pulls away.

Only her head, already haloed, bows,

acquiescing. And though she will, she's not yet said,

Behold, I am the handmaid of the lord,

as Botticelli, in his great pity,

lets her refuse, accept, refuse, and think again.

© Andrew Hudgins, pages 106-107

in Upholding Mystery,

An Anthology of Contemporary

Christian Poetry, Edited by

David Impastato,

Oxford University Press,

New York, Oxford, 1997

Painting by Sandro Botticelli

Notes from Google:

The Annunciation, also known as the Cestello Annunciation, is a tempera painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, circa 1489-1490. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence.

The picture was commissioned in 1489 by the church of the Florentine convent of Cestello which is now known as Santa Maria Maddalena de'Pazzi.

Underneath the painting on its original frame are words in Latin from St. Luke's Gospel 1:35 "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."