Original upload date: Mon, 30 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Thu, 09 Dec 2021 01:05:38 GMT
First performance, recorded live in Selwyn College Chapel on Advent Sunday 2020
The Annunciation
It was not the entrance of an angel, mark you,
that startled her. Any more than others start
when sun’
...
s rays or moon by night
intrude into a room,
she maintained to be affronted by
the form angels take;
she hardly guessed how onerous
that sojourn is. (O, if we knew
how pure she was. Had not a resting hind
once glimpsed her in the woods,
and lost itself in her such that,
unmated, it begat a unicorn,
the beast of purity and light?)
It was not the angel’s entrance, but the closeness
of the youngling’s face
as he bowed: her upward gaze and his
fused together as if outside
all at once was void
and what millions had seen and done and borne
compressed in her: just her and him;
beholder and beheld, eye and eye’s delight
no otherwhere but here. Look:
it is startling. And it startled them both.
Then the angel sang his song.
Ave Maria.
words: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) tr. Simon Beattie
music: Simon Beattie (b. 1975)
