Degas, National Gallery of Scotland

It seems familiar somehow, though it’s set
In a parlor in New Orleans—another age.
It’s summer—the furniture is draped in white.
A shadowed man looks up from the piano.
Two women are rehearsing a duet—
One is striding down an imagined stage
In full-throated aria, the other,
Turning her face away, holds up her right
Hand against the blast of shrill soprano.

But reading the little plaque, I understand—
The casual scene from life begins to change
To genre. The woman with the lifted hand,
Turning away, as if half-terrified,
With loose, high-waisted skirt, will be a mother.
The singer bearing down on her, mouth wide,
Is the angel trumpeting the news so strange,
So ordinary, it’s difficult to believe—
And greater than anything she could conceive.