The angel is angular,
Suspended like light.
Mary turns her face
Up to the window.
Sunlight penetrates
Square corridor of light.
This is the midpoint
Between light and dark.

Between word and image,
A long loneliness.
A seed grows nurtured
In quiet and stillness.
Does Mary know she will
Give birth, to witness outcasts
In line to touch and to gape,
To stare and to hunger?

Spring nurtures hope,
Light lengthening into light.
Autumn sun tapers.
So much of living,
A surrender to light:
As in the wood engraver’s trade
Fritz Eichenberg’s lithographs
Cut to illuminate.