Friday, December 2, 2016
“and wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again ”
Some days offer anniversaries of such blunt courage and beauty that stillness makes a wise response.
Richard Wilbur wrote “The Writer” in 1921, 2 years into the rolling shock waves from chemical warfare horrors twisting the faces and limbs of maimed soldiers returning from Europe and, way too often, not finding jobs waiting to honor their broken bodies: a half-decade of fear and rage, of sometimes savage contempt for most immigrants, and for fellow citizens with whom one differed. Years not unlike the years in which we live just now. Today’s poet recognized, in that precise moment of history, the wonder of young people risking a lot to live into their futures. Learning to write is brave, the poet tells us, especially in hard times.
Have a blest weekend,
john sj
Today’s Post “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.
richard wilbur March 1, 1921 –
p.s. On this day in 1980 4 American women, Maura Clark and Ita Ford (Maryknoll sisters), Dorothy Kazel (Ursuline), and Jean Donovan a young single woman were raped, murdered, and buried in shallow graves in a Salvadoran field by out-of-uniform Salvadoran military. Their murders evoked a response in the U.S. that galvanized opposition to the U.S. Government funding for the Salvadoran government. Brave women.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_murders_of_U.S._missionaries_in_El_Salvador
p.p.s. Yesterday a statement from presidents of the network of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) articulated their stance of support for undocumented students across the national network. http://jesuits.org/news-detail?TN=NEWS-20161130013852&utm_source=Jesuit+eNews+December+1%2C+2016&utm_campaign=Dec.+1%2C+2016+eNewsletter&utm_medium=email
