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Seed Leaves Homage to R. F. Here something stubborn comes, Dislodging the earth crumbs And making crusty rubble. it comes up bending double, An… - Richard Wilbur
" "Seed Leaves
Homage to R. F.
Here something stubborn comes,
Dislodging the earth crumbs
And making crusty rubble.
it comes up bending double,
And looks like a green staple.
It could be seedling maple,
Or artichoke, or bean.
That remains to be seen.
Forced to make choice of ends,
The stalk in time unbends,
Shakes off the seed-case, heaves
Aloft, and spreads two leaves
Which still display no sure
And special signature.
Toothless and fat, they keep
The oval form of sleep.
This plant would like to grow
And yet be embryo;
In crease, and yet escape
The doom of taking shape;
Be vaguely vast, and climb
To the tip end of time
With all of space to fill,
Like boundless Igdrasil
That has the stars for fruit.
But something at the root
More urgent that the urge
Bids two true leaves emerge;
And now the plant, resigned
To being self-defined
Before it can commerce
With the great universe,
Takes aim at all the sky
And starts to ramify.
English
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About Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (1 March 1921 - 14 October 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Richard Purdy Wilbur
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Additional quotes by Richard Wilbur
"Mantova"
The first thing I saw in the morning
Was a huge golden bee ploughing
His burly right shoulder into the belly
Of a sleek yellow pear
Low on a bough.
Before he could find that sudden black honey
That squirms around in there
Inside the seed, the tree could not bear any more.
The pear fell to the ground,
With the bee still half alive
Inside its body.
He would have died had I not knelt down
And sliced the pear gently
A little more open.
The bee shuddered, and returned.
Maybe I should have left him a lone there
Drowning in his own delight.
The best days are the first
To flee.
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"A Storm In April"
Some winters, taking leave,
Deal us a last, hard blow,
Salting the ground like Carthage
Before they will go.
But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today — It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.
The light flakes do not weigh
The willows down, but sift
Through the white catkins, loose
As petal-drift
Or in an up-draft lift
And glitter at a height,
Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir
Chinked with light.
This storm, if I am right,
Will not be wholly over
Till green fields, here and there,
Turn white with clover,
And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.
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