“All seemed new”

The Birth of Mary
(The Life of the Virgin Mary, 1912)

How must the angels have struggled
not to erupt in praises, like one might erupt in tears,
the minute they knew that tonight would be born
the mother, who’d soon bear the son.

Wind a-flapping they held their tongues pointing the direction
to where the only house was that of Joachim’s;
o, how they could feel in the air the purest complexion,
but none was allowed to stoop down to him.

For the couple were already upset enough.
A neighbor had come to share what she barely knew,
and the old man had silenced a cow that mooed
as a precaution—and all seemed new.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

[From The Beauty of Mary , edited by Rosemary Vaccari Mysel, et al. (Pauline, 2008).]