More of the Best - Enjoy
Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile
verbum.
And once sent
out a word takes wing irrevocably.
(Horace 65-8 B.C.)
The Best Days
Optima dies prima fugit
First, the two men stand pondering
The square stone block sunk in the earth.
It must weigh five hundred pounds. The best
Days are the first
to flee. The taller man has gray hair
And long thin arms, the other
Squat with young shoulders, his legs
Slightly bowed already, a laborer
With the years, like a tree.
One works the edge
Of his steel claw subtly
Between the stones.
The other waits for the right instant,
A dazzle of balance, and slips the blade
Of his cold chisel into the crack.
Balancing the great weight of this enormous
And beautiful floorstone laid by the Romans,
Holding a quarter ton of stone lightly
Between earth and air,
The tall man with the gray hair reaches
Around the corner of stone
And most delicately eases
A steel pipe beneath.
The best days are the first
To flee. Now both men
Can stand upright, then gradually,
Their fine hands sure, they can ease
The stone from its place.
I look beneath.
It does not look like a grave
Of anybody, anybody at all,
Not even a Roman
Legionary or slave.
It is just under the stone.
The earth smells fresh, like the breath
Of a calf just born in
With me.
When I look up,
The tall old man with the slender arms, the young man
With the frail bulging shoulders
Are gone for some wine, Work hard, and give
The body its due of rest, even at noon.
The best days are the first to flee,
And the underside of the stone
Is pink marble
From Verona. The poet found, in
The friendship of daylight,
and a little peace.
The First Days
Optima dies prima fugit
The first thing I saw in the morning
Was a huge golden bee ploughing
His burly right shoulder into the belly
Of a sleek yellow pear
Low on a bough.
Before he could find that sudden black honey
That squirms around in there
Inside the seed, the tree could not bear any more.
The pear fell to the ground,
With the bee still half alive
Inside its body.
He would have died if I hadn't knelt down
And sliced the pear gently
A little more open.
The bee shuddered, and returned.
Maybe I should have left him alone there,
Drowning in his own delight.
The best days are the first
to flee, sang the lovely
Musician born in this town
So like my own.
I let the bee go
Among the gasworks at the edge of
Poems by James Wright, To A Blossoming Pear Tree
(1977). Reprinted in Above the River - The Complete Poems
(1990).
From James Wright's poem, "Two Hangovers"
Number Two: I Try to Waken and Greet the World Once Again
In a pine tree,
A few yards away from my window sill,
A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down,
On a branch.
I laugh, as I see him abandon himself
To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do,
That the branch will not break.
James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break (1963). Reprinted
in Above the River - The Complete Poems (1990).
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break (1963). Reprinted
in Above the River - The Complete Poems (1990).
The Jewel
There is this cave
In the air behind my body
That nobody is going to touch:
A cloister, a silence
Closing around a blossom of fire.
When I stand upright in the wind,
My bones turn to dark emeralds.
James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break (1963). Reprinted
in Above the River - The Complete Poems (1990).
Visit
Sculpture Gallery
Go to Obsidian Knives
Return to Connections
Return to Wright Page
Return to Home Page