Sunday Verse
Marginalia
by Richard Wilbur
Things concentrate at the edges; the pond-surface Is bourne to fish and man and it is spread In textile scum and damask light, on which The lily-pads are set; and there are also Inlaid ruddy twigs, becalmed pine-leaves, Air-baubles, and the chain mail of froth. Descending into sleep (as when the night-lift Falls past a brilliant floor), we glimpse a sublime Decor and hear, perhaps, a complete music, But this evades us, as in the night meadows The crickets' million roundsong dies away From all advances, rising in every distance. Our riches are centrifugal; men compose Daily, unwittingly, their final dreams, And those are our own voices whose remote Consummate chorus rides on the whirlpool's rim, Past which we flog our sails, toward which we drift, Plying our own trades, in hopes of a good drowning.
