Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

In the Field

87 riChArD WilBur In the Field This field-grass brushed our legs Last night, when out we stumbled looking up, Wading as through the cloudy dregs Of a wide, sparkling cup, Our thrown-back heads aswim In the grand, kept appointments of the air, Save where a pine at the sky’s rim Took something from the Bear. Black in her glinting chains, Andromeda feared nothing from the seas, Preserved as by no hero’s pains, Or hushed Euripides’, And there the dolphin glowed, Still flailing through a diamond froth of stars, Flawless as when Arion rode One of its avatars. But none of that was true. What shapes that Greece or Babylon discerned Had time not slowly drawn askew Or like cat’s cradles turned? And did we not recall That Egypt’s north was in the Dragon’s tail? As if a form of type should fall And dash itself like hail, The heavens jumped away, Bursting the cincture of the zodiac, Shot flares with nothing left to say To us, not coming back Unless they should at last, Like hard-flung dice that ramble out the throw, Be gathered for another cast. Whether that might be so 88 gArnet poems We could not say, but trued Our talk awhile to words of the real sky, Chatting of class or magnitude, Star-clusters, nebulae, And how Antares, huge As Mars’ big roundhouse swing, and more, was fled As in some rimless centrifuge Into a blink of red. It was the nip of fear That told us when imagination caught The feel of what we said, came near The schoolbook thoughts we thought, And faked a scan of space Blown black and hollow by our spent grenade, All worlds dashed out without a trace, The very light unmade. Then, in the late-night chill, We turned and picked our way through outcrop stone By the faint starlight, up the hill To where our bed-lamp shone. Today, in the same field, The sun takes all, and what could lie beyond? Those holes in heaven have been sealed Like rain-drills in a pond, And we, beheld in gold, See nothing starry but these galaxies Of flowers, dense and manifold, Which lift about our knees— White daisy-drifts where you Sink down to pick an armload as we pass, Sighting the heal-all’s minor blue In chasms of the grass, 89 riChArD WilBur And strews of hawkweed where, Amongst the reds or yellows as they burn, A few dead polls commit to air The seeds of their return. We could no doubt mistake These flowers for some answer to that fright We felt for all creation’s sake In our dark talk last night, Taking to heart what came Of the heart’s wish for life, which, staking here In the least field an endless claim, Beats on from sphere to sphere And pounds beyond the sun, Where nothing less peremptory can go, And is ourselves, and is the one Unbounded thing we know. ...