“Ida Reading a Letter” (1898)
            Vilhelm Hammershøi

This vacancy gleams. The young woman
has paused in her bourgeois afternoon to read a letter.
She guards her possible joy in this quietness
of polished wood and glass, beside the waiting cup
that stands for receptivity. For a moment, she lives
in the held breath warming in her chest, waiting
for the words from far away to give it form,
as, in the harbour we don’t see from this interior,
water begins to tremble at the touch of rain.
This time, the angel will not shimmer into being
in the doorway and say her name. This is peace.
She will read and breathe again, and, outside,
the Nineteenth Century will end, its pragmatic
slaughters jolting softly to a calm, the tall grass
of the fields repeating the ancient shapes of wind.
Around her, the vacancy gleams and means itself.
One hesitates to speak of light, now, but the silken,
attentive light woven through this intimacy is the angel.