5 May: "Love Calls us to the Things of this World" by Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys, 

And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   

Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   

As false dawn. 

                     Outside the open window   

The morning air is all awash with angels. 



    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   

Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.   

Now they are rising together in calm swells   

Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear   

With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing; 



    Now they are flying in place, conveying 

The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving   

And staying like white water; and now of a sudden   

They swoon down into so rapt a quiet 

That nobody seems to be there. 

                                             The soul shrinks 



    From all that it is about to remember, 

From the punctual rape of every blessèd day, 

And cries, 

               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   

Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam 

And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.” 



    Yet, as the sun acknowledges 

With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   

The soul descends once more in bitter love   

To accept the waking body, saying now 

In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   

    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows; 

Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   

Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   

And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   

Of dark habits, 

                      keeping their difficult balance.”