Marie Howe – Annunciation

Emphasizing the final power of experience over all else, in 1953, a BBC reporter asked depth psychologist Carl Jung whether he believed in God. His response: “I don’t believe. I know.” Echoing this sentiment, in an interview with Krista Tippet, poet Marie Howe said, “All I know is that some things have happened that I don’t understand, and they are the most true things I’ve known.” 

Howe’s poem, “Annunciation” reminds us that irrespective of our theism, atheism, agnosticism, or intellectualization, in our one lifetime, should we be fortunate to have even a single experience of the sacred, it will imbue us with a truth that is–forevermore and regardless of all else–all that is really true. 

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Annunciation

Even if I don’t see it again — nor ever feel it
I know it is — and that if once it hailed me
it ever does–

And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
not as toward a place, but it was a tilting
within myself,

as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where
it isn’t — I was blinded like that — and swam
in what shone at me

only able to endure it by being no one and so
specifically myself I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.

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