“Obscurely
yet most surely called to praise,
As
sometimes summer calls us all, I said
The
hills are heavens full of branching ways
Where
star-nosed moles fly overhead the dead;
I
said the trees are mines in air. I said
See
how the sparrow burrows in the sky!
And
then I wondered why this mad instead
Perverts
our praise to uncreation, why
Such
savor’s in this wrenching things awry.
Does
sense so stale that it must needs derange
The
world to know it? To a praiseful eye
Should
it not be enough of fresh and strange
That
trees grow green, and moles can course in clay,
And sparrows sweep the ceiling of our day?”
Almost uniquely among our better poets, Wilbur is “called to
praise.” I don’t remember a phrase or line of complaint, but Praise in Summer”
is a self-critique. Creation needs no embellishment, yet the urge to create and
praise lingers and grows stronger. In “Five Favourite Poetry Books” (Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language, 2014) Clive James
includes Wilbur’s Poems 1943-1956 (in which The Beautiful Changes is collected), along
with titles by Yeats, Frost, Auden and Larkin. James likens his impact on his contemporaries
to the arrival of a “rococo asteroid, burning up their air with his displays of
cool fire.” On March 1, Wilbur turned ninety-four.
2 comments:
The Wilbur quotation - vertiginous and marvellous.
Two things: 1) when I was in Flatonia weekend before last, we sat in the dark on the back porch, way out in the country. Immediately noticeable to me was the loud chorus of frogs, celebrating Nature's abundance. There were tenors, baritones, basses, and basso profundos, all roaring con gusto in praise of recent rains. 2) Our section of Sugar Land is swarming with White Wing Doves nowadays. Until a decade or so ago, White Wings were an exotic game bird that lived in the Rio Grande Valley too timid or precious to venture north. "Big game hunters" safaried south on expensive boondoggles to shoot them. If game laws allowed it, I could have all I want without leaving our patio.
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