Today's poem
I feel this formal poem is shaped with holy beauty, though I am not a Christian. The equivocal first-line in the first stanza reminds me of verse of the metaphysical poet George Herbert. The last stanza leads me to my retrospect of the wooden catholic church and the stained glass there in Miryang city ( https://eng.miryang.go.kr/main/ ), South Korea.
I feel this formal poem is shaped with holy beauty, though I am not a Christian. The equivocal first-line in the first stanza reminds me of verse of the metaphysical poet George Herbert. The last stanza leads me to my retrospect of the wooden catholic church and the stained glass there in Miryang city ( https://eng.miryang.go.kr/main/ ), South Korea.
A vision can appear in front of me: the unseen may be seen - a mystery or omen, isn't it?
A Plain Song for Comadre by Richard Wilbur
Though the unseen may vanish, though insight fails
And doubter and downcast saint
A Plain Song for Comadre by Richard Wilbur
Though the unseen may vanish, though insight fails
And doubter and downcast saint
Join in the same complaint,
What holy things were ever frightened off
By a fly's buzz, or itches, or a cough?
Harder than nails
They are, more warmly constant than the sun,
At whose continual sign
The dimly prompted vine
Upbraids itself to a green excellence.
What evening, when the slow and forced expense
Of sweat is done,
Does not the dark come flooding the straight furrow
Or filling the well-made bowl?
What night will not the whole
Sky with its clear studs and steady spheres
Turn on a sound chimney? It is seventeen years
Come tomorrow
That Bruna Sandoval has kept the church
Of San Ysidro, sweeping
And scrubbing the aisles, keeping
The candlesticks and the plaster faces bright,
And seen no visions but the thing done right
From the clay porch
To the white altar. For love and in all weathers
This is what she has done.
Sometimes the early sun
Shines as she flings the scrubwater out, with a crash
Of grimy rainbows, and the stained suds flash
Like angel-feathers.
What holy things were ever frightened off
By a fly's buzz, or itches, or a cough?
Harder than nails
They are, more warmly constant than the sun,
At whose continual sign
The dimly prompted vine
Upbraids itself to a green excellence.
What evening, when the slow and forced expense
Of sweat is done,
Does not the dark come flooding the straight furrow
Or filling the well-made bowl?
What night will not the whole
Sky with its clear studs and steady spheres
Turn on a sound chimney? It is seventeen years
Come tomorrow
That Bruna Sandoval has kept the church
Of San Ysidro, sweeping
And scrubbing the aisles, keeping
The candlesticks and the plaster faces bright,
And seen no visions but the thing done right
From the clay porch
To the white altar. For love and in all weathers
This is what she has done.
Sometimes the early sun
Shines as she flings the scrubwater out, with a crash
Of grimy rainbows, and the stained suds flash
Like angel-feathers.
(from the website of Poetry Foundation)