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r.i.p. richard wilbur
Ричард Уилбур, один из самых ярких американских поэтов, бесподобный художник английского языка, умер в возрасте 96 лет. Огромная потеря и очень жаль его и очень жаль...
At Moorditch
"Now," said the voice of lock and window-bar,
"You must confront things as they truly are.
Open your eyes at last, and see
The desolateness of reality."
"Things have," I said, "a pallid, empty look,
Like pictures in an unused coloring book."
"Now that the scales have fallen from your eyes,"
Said the sad hallways, "you must recognize
How childishly your former sight
Salted the world with glory and delight."
"This cannot be the world," I said. "Nor will it,
Till the heart's crayon spangle and fulfill it."
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.
At Moorditch
"Now," said the voice of lock and window-bar,
"You must confront things as they truly are.
Open your eyes at last, and see
The desolateness of reality."
"Things have," I said, "a pallid, empty look,
Like pictures in an unused coloring book."
"Now that the scales have fallen from your eyes,"
Said the sad hallways, "you must recognize
How childishly your former sight
Salted the world with glory and delight."
"This cannot be the world," I said. "Nor will it,
Till the heart's crayon spangle and fulfill it."
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.
no subject
no subject
no subject
The Writer
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
no subject
A Black November Turkey
Nine white chickens come
With haunchy walk and heads
Jabbing among the chips, the chaff, the stones
And the cornhusk-shreds,
And bit by bit infringe
A pond of dusty light,
Spectral in shadow until they bobbingly one
By one ignite.
Neither pale nor bright,
The turkey-cock parades
Through radiant squalors, darkly auspicious as
The ace of spades,
Himself his own cortége
And puffed with the pomp of death,
Rehearsing over and over with strangled râle
His latest breath.
The vast black body floats
Above the crossing knees
As a cloud over thrashed branches, a calm ship
Over choppy seas,
Shuddering its fan and feathers
In fine soft clashes
With the cold sound that the wind makes, fondling
Paper-ashes.
The pale-blue bony head
Set on its shepherd’s-crook
Like a saint’s death-mask, turns a vague, superb
And timeless look
Upon these clocking hens
And the cocks that one by one,
Dawn after mortal dawn with vulgar joy
Acclaim the sun.
Re: A Black November Turkey
Galveston, 1961
Clear water fled your shape,
By choppy shallows flensed
And shaken like a cape,
Who gently butted down
Through weeds, and were unmade,
Piecemeal stirring your brown
Legs into stirred shade,
And rose, and with pastel
Coronas of your skin
Stained swell on glassy swell,
Letting them bear you in:
Now you have come to shore,
One woman and no other,
Sleek Panope no more,
Nor the vague sea our mother.
Shake out your spattering hair
And sprawl beside me here,
Sharing what we can share
Now that we are so near—
Small talk and speechless love,
Mine being all but dumb
That knows so little of
What goddess you become
And still half-seem to be,
Though close and clear you lie,
Whom droplets of the sea
Emboss and magnify.