The Angelus

Jean-Franҫois Millet (French, 1814–1875), The Angelus, 1857–59

 The Angelus is a traditional Christian prayer whose name comes from its opening words in Latin, “Angelus Domini” (The angel of the Lord). For centuries it was prayed by the faithful three times a day—at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m.—the times announced by the ringing of bells from church towers. In the 19th-century, Millet famously painted two peasant farmers at dusk pausing from their labor in the fields to bow their heads and pray the Angelus. Seth Wieck interprets this painting through poetry, focusing on the part of the prayer that says, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” expressing an attitude of surrender to God’s will. Wieck imagines the hard life of the man and woman shown pulling up potatoes from the earth—the same earth in which, shortly hence, they’ll bury a child, lost to sickness. The poem becomes a meditation on death, harvest, and acceptance.

L'Angélus

For David, after Millet

The air distends, diffusing light and sound.

Our vespers announce on bellsong.

Crows rise in timorous peal of wingflap, feather-

flushed messengers, evangels and vandals.

Our heads lean in, prayer prone, twin candle-

flames bent on breath—whence it comes—what breather

gutters our thoughts, then on throatwicks, gives words rise:

According to thy word. A shaped sound, round

as potatoes, those blind tubers die but never die,

only sprout eyes and live their lives beneath the ground.

The same bent back which forks potatoes for the basket

will spade the hole for the casket of a child.

Seth Wieck