All Poems

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In Nevada there is a field where giant mushrooms grow
One mile high and two miles wide, they say on the show
Thats where they test how to vaporize people and flesh
By splitting and fusing atoms and start the world afresh.

Matthew VIII,28 ff.

© Richard Wilbur

Rabbi, we Gadarenes
Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.
Love, as You call it, we obviate by means
Of the planned release of aggressions.

Transit

© Richard Wilbur

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

Orchard Trees, January

© Richard Wilbur

It's not the case, though some might wish it so
Who from a window watch the blizzard blowWhite riot through their branches vague and stark,
That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark.They take affliction in until it jells
To crystal ice between their frozen cells,And each of them is inwardly a vault

Epistemology

© Richard Wilbur

I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

March 26, 1974

© Richard Wilbur

R.Frost 100th B'dayThe air was soft, the ground still cold.
In wet dull pastures where I strolled
Was something I could not believe.
Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,

The Prisoner of Zenda

© Richard Wilbur

It would be poor behavia
In him and in Princess Flavia
Were they to put their own
Concerns before those of the Throne.
Deborah Kerr must wed
The King instead.

In a Churchyard

© Richard Wilbur

That flower unseen, that gem of purest ray,
Bright thoughts uncut by men:
Strange that you need but speak them, Thomas Gray,
And the mind skips and dives beyond its ken,

Puritans

© Richard Wilbur

Sidling upon the river, the white boat
Has volleyed with its cannon all the morning,
Shaken the shore towns like a Judgment warning,
Telling the palsied water its demand
That the crime come to the top again, and float,
That the sunk murder rise to the light and land.

Parable

© Richard Wilbur

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide

Worlds

© Richard Wilbur

For Alexander there was no Far East,
Because he thought the Asian continent
India ended. Free Cathay at least
Did not contribute to his discontent.

Exeunt

© Richard Wilbur

Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field's edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.

The Riddle

© Richard Wilbur

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all His grammar,I love Him that He did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,

June Light

© Richard Wilbur

Your voice, with clear location of June days,
Called me outside the window.You were there,
Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare
Of uncontested summer all things raise
Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness

The tall camels of the spirit
Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud
With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the
arid
Sun. They are slow, proud,

Advice to a Prophet

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Riddle

Where far in forest I am laid,
In a place ringed around by stones,
Look for no melancholy shade,
And have no thoughts of buried bones;

In the Smoking Car

The eyelids meet. He'll catch a little nap.
The grizzled, crew-cut head drops to his chest.
It shakes above the briefcase on his lap.
Close voices breathe, "Poor sweet, he did his best."

Shame

It is a cramped little state with no foreign policy,
Save to be thought inoffensive. The grammar of the language
Has never been fathomed, owing to the national habit
Of allowing each sentence to trail off in confusion.