Tag Archives: Richard Wilbur

He drops by a silken thread.

nature, poetry, quotes, , , , , , ,

More than one reviewer of Richard Wilbur’s late collection of poems noticed that after his wife died, the poet wrote more about death, as in this example below. That would be a natural response, of course, for someone 90 years old, even if he hadn’t been recently widowed.

I know it’s recommended that people of all ages live with awareness of the shortness of our lives, as in Psalm 90: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Or as another translation goes, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life….”

If our dearest friends and family have departed, it could exacerbate any feeling of weariness we already had with this earthly existence. In the same Psalm the poet mentions the less-than-thrilling aspects of life: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

A MEASURING WORM

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.

~ Richard Wilbur

Richard Wilbur was a lot smarter than an inchworm, so I like to think he had this verse from I Corinthians in mind when he wrote those last lines: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

Because the Preparer is Love, our Last Things, though unimaginable, will be the best.

I first shared this poem of Wilbur’s ten years ago, before he had passed over, into what we might think of as the pupa stage; today I read this about the inchworm:

“After the larva hatches, he feeds on leaves for about a month before he drops to the ground via a silken thread. In late spring or early summer, the larva burrows up to 4 inches into the ground, spins his cocoon and pupates. If he’s a fall worm, he’ll emerge in the fall, usually between November and early December. If he’s a spring worm, he’ll wait until the next late winter to emerge.”

At the time of Wilbur’s death I posted one article written about him for the occasion, but just now I found another tribute in USA Today, in which the journalist remarks on the unusual quality of happiness in this poet, and quotes Wilbur:

“I think many people associate happiness with shallowness,” Wilbur told the AP. “What people don’t want is someone who is complacent. And I know that I am not a complacent man.”

Richard Wilbur was the farthest from complacent that I can imagine. He spent his life being attentive to the world around him and pursuing love and beauty. I hope that in his present state he knows even more what C.S. Lewis meant when he said:

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

Geometer inchworm moth – Scopula Decorata or Middle Lace Borer

One thing does not exist.

poetry, reality, time, , , ,

EVERNESS

One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross.
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
Everything in the shadows in the glass
Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you
Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
And everything is part of that diverse
Crystalline memory, the universe;
Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
And only from the sunset’s farther side
Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.

-Jorge Luis Borges
translated by Richard Wilbur

 

Praising with drum and cello.

music, poetry, , ,

PSALM

Give thanks for all things
On the plucked lute, and likewise
The harp of ten strings.

Have the lifted horn
Greatly blare, and pronounce it
Good to have been born.

Lend the breath of life
To the stops of the sweet flute
Or capering fife,

And tell the deep drum
To make, at the right juncture,
Pandemonium.

Then, in grave relief,
Praise too our sorrows on the
Cello of shared grief.

-Richard Wilbur

Ascension – a poem and a prayer

feasts, poetry, , , ,

I decided to post the prayer below, and not an hour later I finally found the poem. I say finally, because I had moved the small volume in which the poem is found, from the bookshelf in one room, to the top of a trunk in another, to a dresser and then a table, over the course of several months, in an absentminded effort to get it downstairs. One morning I managed to carry it down, and another day I followed through on my longstanding desire to open it.

To me the prayer and the poem share the same hope and desire. Doubtless when we get to know our true selves, we will find that we all share this. Richard Wilbur has said that he began writing poems in earnest while a soldier in the Second World War: “One does not use poetry for its major purposes, as a means to organize oneself and the world, until one’s world somehow gets out of hand.”

The older I get, and considering all the ways that my inner and outer worlds have required strong “organizing” by means of writing, the more I might wish I were in the habit of writing poetry. But writing anything and having it come out right is hard enough, at the same time it becomes more necessary.

Wilbur’s wife died when they had been married 65 years. Earlier, after only 50 years of marriage, he had said: “My wife was the first person it occurred to me to marry, and I was really quite stunned that she felt the same about me. I know that I would be capable of great disorder and emotional confusion if I were out of my wife’s orbit; she really has greatly steadied me.” In this poem he wrote after her death I think it’s significant that he is conscious of setting out for the place, not merely the person whose vision urges him on.

THE HOUSE

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.

What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.

Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea.

-Richard Wilbur

The prayer that inspired this post to begin with is in a book newly published by St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press. It contains many familiar prayers from previous Orthodox prayer books, but also some that aren’t as well known, and a few specially conceived for modern times, such as a prayer “Before Using the Internet,” and a “Prayer Against Insomnia.” One section is titled “The Glorious Majesty of the Lord.” Yes!

I hope to share a few other selections from this collection of Orthodox Christian Prayers, which is beautiful in its binding and formatting as well as its content, but for the first one, it seems fitting that is attributed to the patron saint of the oldest Orthodox monastery in America; their publishing arm gave us this book. It is in a section titled “Prayers for Spiritual Struggle.”

About a month ago ? — hard to say, time is strange right now — when I began to struggle myself with what you might call tormenting thoughts, driven by the social and economic upheaval of the coronavirus pandemic, I also opened this prayer book for the first time, and came upon this entry. In the words of Richard Wilbur, it speedily helped me to organize myself and my relationship to this world. It mentions the feast of Christ’s Ascension, so I waited to publish it now, 40 days after Pascha, when we are remembering that event.

A PRAYER to INHERIT HEAVEN
by St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

With my flesh I worship thine Ascension into heaven, and I pray to thee, my Lord, raise my mind from what is earthly to that which is on high, strengthen my infirmity, and make up for what is lacking and small in me, leading me heavenward unto a good and saving end, unto thee who art in heaven, which is our true home, our fatherland, inheritance, property, wealth, honor, glory, comfort, joy, and eternal blessedness. Amen.

When You did fulfill the dispensation for our sake,
And unite earth to Heaven:
You did ascend in glory, O Christ our God,
Not being parted from those who love You,
But remaining with them and crying:
I am with you and no one will be against you.

–Hymn for the Feast of Ascension