At this week’s Board meeting, our newest Trustee and Professor Emerita Barbara Lovenheim shared a poem in recognition of April as National Poetry Month. It made me reflect on some of my favorite poems, and since this week is a break for students and faculty, I thought I could make use of this “downtime” Wednesday Message to share one to which I return to over and over. It speaks to the enormous struggles and unlikely triumphs to be had in each endeavor, suggesting the real possibility that--though bruised by our experiences--we can still set a “smooth course for the right window” and “[clear] the sill of the world.”
“The Writer”
Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
What is one of your favorite poems? Share it on the blog.
Anne Kress
President's Office
04/11/2012 |