a reed that is empty
until the Breath of God
fills it with infinite music:

And the breath of the Spirit of Love
utters the Word of God
through an empty reed.

The word of God
is infinite music
in a little reed.

It is the sound of a Virgin's heart,
beating in the solitude of adoration;
it is a girl's voice
speaking to an angel,
answering for the whole world:

It is the sound of the heart of Christ,
beating within the Virgin's heart;
it is the pulse of God,
timed by the breath of a child.
The circle of a girl's arms
has changed the world -
the round sorrowful world -
to a cradle for God.

She has laid Love in His cradle.
In every cot,
Mary has laid her Child.

In each comes Christ;
in each, Christ comes
to birth;
comes Christ from the Mother's breast
as the bird from the sun
returning -
returning again to the tree he knows,
and the nest,
to last year's rifled nest.

Into our hands
Mary has given her Child:
heir to the world's tears,
heir to the world's toil,
heir to the world's scars,
heir to the chill dawn
over the ruin of wars.

She has laid Love in His cradle,
answering for us all:
"Be it done unto me:"
The Child in the wooden bed,
the light in the dark house,
the life in the failing soul,
the Host in the priest's hands,
the seed in the hard earth,
the man who is child again -
quiet in the burial bands
waiting his birth.

Mary, Mother of God,
we are the poor soil
and the dry dust;
we are hard with a cold frost.

Be warmth to the world;
be the thaw,
warm on the cold frost;
be the thaw that melts
that the tender shoot of Christ
piercing the hard heart,
flower to a spring in us.