The Political Forum

YEAR'S END
Richard Wilbur (1921 - )

Generally speaking, I like the rip-roaring poets. I like the poets who hit you right between the eyes with their message, whether they are writing about politics, love, nature, war, death, joy, emotional moments or growing old. I like poets who write what Ben Jonson described in his well known tribute to Shakespeare as "mightly lines," and what Matthew Arnold called in his famous essay "The Study of Poetry" as the "infallible touchstones" of great poetry.

Richard Wilbur is not that kind of poet. His poetry is subtle, his messages muted. He is neither political, nor bombastic. Yet, I like him a great deal. His poetry is introspective, insightful, observant, witty, playful, elegant, musical, often touching. He is a true poetic craftsman. One can tell when reading his work that he loves the language and the poetic medium.

Wilbur reached the pinnacle of his popularity in the 1950s, a time of peace, prosperity, and optimism, mixed with the knowledge that the nation had just passed through a terrible ordeal in order to enjoy a period of national renewal.

Having survived action in the front lines of the war in Italy, France and Germany, Wilbur's work perfectly reflected the buoyant, confident and religiously grateful atmosphere of post-war America. And when times changed, he remained very much the same, which hurt his general popularity somewhat, but provided a continuum of optimistic, orderly, light-hearted, and spiritually imbued poetry for his fans to enjoy throughout the troubled 1960s and 1970s.

His first and second books of poetry, The Beautiful Changes in 1947 and Ceremony in 1950, were well received. His third collection, Things of This World, came out in 1956 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In 1987, he was named the second Poet Laureate of the United States, following Robert Penn Warren.

I had trouble choosing just one of the many wonderful poems by Wilbur that I number among my favorites. I hope you enjoy my selection. It is vintage Wilbur, still water running deep. To really enjoy this poem, I recommend reading it aloud.

Year's End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes where ice is thin
And still allows some stirrings down within.

I've known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the grey
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

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