The angel spoke—so had he never spoken!
As he announced the Lord to Mary
The stars moved in prayer,
Worlds broke open and the angels cried
With all the voices of all the prophets.

The handmaid of the Lord and now already queen
Knew his words and listened quietly toward them.
Her eye slid away from the angel into the distance
And because of this gaze she became great.
For what she saw, the whole destiny of humanity
After Golgatha, none saw till that time.

The angel was silent—she spoke to him
Still opened from the far image
Of the new heaven and the new earth,
And before it dissolved from her beholding
She spoke the word from the first day: Let it be.
Thus she found her eternal gesture—
and her difficult eternity began.

by Richard Schubert