Annunciation

Denise Levertov was born in England to a Welsh mother and a Russian Hasidic father. Her father, who had emigrated to the UK from Leipzig, converted to Christianity and became an Anglican priest. She moved to the United States in 1948, and in 1955 became an American citizen. By the time she died in 1997, Levertov had published nearly fifty volumes of poetry, prose, and translations. Levertov taught at Brandeis, MIT, Tufts, Stanford, and the University of Washington. It was at Stanford, where she taught for 11 years (1982–1993) in the Stegner Fellowship program, and where her papers are now housed, that Levertov converted to Christianity at the age of sixty. After moving to Seattle in 1989, she joined the Catholic Church.

Denise Levertov

Annunciation

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,

almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,

whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage.

The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent.

God waited.

She was free to accept or to refuse, choice integral to humanness.

Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives?

Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending.

More often those moments when roads of light and storm

open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

She had been a child who played, ate, slept like any other child – but unlike others,

wept only for pity, laughed in joy not triumph. Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous than any in all of Time,

she did not quail, only asked a simple, ‘How can this be?’

and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel’s reply,

perceiving instantly the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry

in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain

in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light.

Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other,

milk and love – but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of, when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed, Spirit, suspended, waiting.

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth, raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans, consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light, the lily glowed in it, and the iridescent wings.

Consent, courage unparalleled, opened her utterly.