Richard Wilbur (again)

On bad days--and today was a bad day--I find Richard Wilbur's poetry particularly comforting. His poems aren't mannered but they are mannerly--neat, contained, structured, witty, urbane. They're not tortured; they don't demand anything of you. More than anything though, his poems leave you with the distinct impression that Wilbur is, essentially, an optimist who thinks the world is, in the end, a good place filled with good things. But they do so in a way that is affirming rather than intrusive. Which is exactly what I need on those days when things don't go as they should.

STILL, CITIZEN SPARROW
Richard Wilbur

Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call
Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air
Over the rotten office, let him bear
The carrion ballast up, and at the tall

Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you’ll see
That no more beautiful bird is in heaven’s height,
No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller flight;
He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free,

The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you
Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he
Devours death, mocks mutability,
Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new.

Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget
How for so many bedlam hours his saw
Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw,
And the slam of his hammer all the day beset

The people’s ears. Forget that he could bear
To see the towns like coral under the keel,
And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel
How high and weary it was, on the waters where

He rocked his only world, and everyone’s.
Forgive the hero, you who would have died
Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide
To Ararat; all men are Noah’s sons.