Annunciation, 1960 — Blackbird Archive

← v15n1, Spring 2016

By the bare altar

the minister pinned paper wings to my shoulders,

scolded me for forgetting my halo.

Light glazed the sweat

on his forehead. I hid behind a curtain,

sniffed the lily in my fist.

Aching for the Virgin

to end her song, I mouthed:

“Blessed art thou who art favored with the Son of God. . . .”

Under the cardboard dove

I knelt, hoping for a miracle

to write the angel’s lines on my hand.

All I heard was blood

throbbing in my ears, the Virgin’s gown

rustling toward the curtain,

shoes scuffing the church floor.

On the stage crisscrossed by shadows,

I waited with my crushed lily, my gift of silence.

childhood religion memory

Henry Hart

Henry Hart is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently Familiar Ghosts (Orchises Press, 2014), and two biographies, The Life of Robert Frost (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and James Dickey: The World as a Lie (Picador, 2000). His poetry and essays have appeared in The New Yorker , Gettysburg Review , Kenyon Review , New England Review , and The Southern Review , among others. He is the recipient of the Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry and was named the poet laureate of Virginia in 2018. Hart is the Mildred and J.B. Hickman Professor of English and Humanities at the College of William & Mary.