So many poems! Of so many kinds!

                  Almost two thousand pages – of small type – my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry – and this just a sampler of – how many? –  more than 180 poets – and these but an elite, of an estimated – hold your breath -- fifty to a hundred thousand poets in English, whose words have appeared in print since the twentieth century’s dawn. More poets, almost, than readers. All urgent, passionate, private, for why else make a poem? – not for the money surely or the fame. I’ve trickled my few – into the ocean – not from ambition but because – who knows why – often a poem feels the only way to say – and what’s been said yearns to be heard – if only by the wind.

                  Daunting, this copiousness – and consoling: no end to howdies – till the end of time – hardly a need for new volumes. I open one anthology – or another – or an old favorite. Because poems are language intensified, I can tackle only a few at a time. A novel one can read till one dozes. Most expository prose one can browse (except mine!). But a poem one must meet alert – or not at all – no just saying hi.

                  Today’s was new to me – or seemed new, my memory’s such a sieve. If we’d met before – and we may have – no sparks – but this time… He was out of vogue, Richard Wilbur  (1921-2017), during my formative years – a formalist, who rhymed – and never bared his breast. I admired him later as a breathtaking translator, especially of Moliere, but this facility almost evicted him from the pantheon of “serious” poets. Serious poets didn’t mess with light verse! Besides, I wasn’t spending much time with poems then, having a career to tend to and few to read with.

                  My anthology opens – at random – to “Still, Citizen Sparrow.” I gave it a whirl – without high hopes but hey – then again – and again. What had changed? Rhymed, exact, detached, these six quatrains gleamed like a faceted jewel – and moved me unexpectedly. For one thing, I’d gotten to know vultures during my years with Jane. Jane showed me how to tell vultures from hawks, both of which looped over our meadow in search of dinner. Why had I never studied the sky before Jane? Another change was you. Your enthusiasm for sharing poems kindled mine. I prowled anthologies, in pursuit of fare.

                  Deeper acquaintance with poetry’s bounty deepened my ignorance and insensibly dissolved my prejudices. There was no preferred way to make a poem – and no preferred topic. What was required, besides talent, was a poet’s urgent passion. Spilling one’s guts was OK, if one spilled them artfully, but not spilling them was OK, too, if one’s heart was discreet. Wilbur’s passion poured itself into precise observation and elegant expression.

                  The conceit of his poem made me smile, like one of Emily Dickinson’s fantastic fancies. He was reconciling “citizen sparrow”, a lowly denizen of earth, to the spectacular lethal heroism of the high-flying vulture. The low-flying ignominious sparrow should take pride in its kinship with the noble vulture, not chafe at its lessness. Look, counsels the poet,

                                                           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. 

(Read those lines aloud and feel the force of those wings!) We lesser souls must pardon our heroes, the conciliatory poet persists, for all creatures have descended from Noah, including humans, the most complexly heroic creature of all.

                  Heroes – like Noah – hammering their arks  -- or like poets – hammering their poems – keep us from being lost to the depths.

* 

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.