The Annunciation

It was not night, not even when the darkness came
That came blacker than any night, and more fearful,
Like a bell beating and I under its darkness dying
To the stun of the sound. Before that
It was not dark nor loud nor any way strange,
Just the empty kitchen, with the smell of the bean-flowers
In their late blossom, coming in at the window,
And the stillness, just that empty hour of the afternoon
                              When it is hard indeed to believe in time...

W.S. Merwin, from The First Four Books of Poems