Your voice, with clear location of June days,

Called me- outside the window. You were there,

Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare

of uncontested summer all things raise

Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

 

Then your love looked as simple and entire

As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face

As legible as pearskin's fleck and trace,

Which promise always wine, by mottled fire

More fatal flashed than ever human grace.

 

And your gay gift – Oh when I saw it fall

Into my hands, through all that naive light,

It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight

As must have been the first great gift of all.

##

From Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems 1943 – 2004. I got this out of my local library.

 


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