O Pen, June 10

 

A thank you to Barb for moderating these on June 10  (see June 10) 

JUNE LIGHT by Richard Wilbur,  JUNE SUNSET by Sarojini Naidu, 1917,  Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, 1888, FLAGS by Elana Bell; A Child is Something Else Again by Yehuda Amichai translated by Chana Bloch; 

Judith was reminded of this poem reading the Richard Wilbur. 

 

From One Person, Sonnet sequence by Elinor Wylie

 

Now shall the long homesickness have an end

Upon your heart, which is a part of all

The past no human creature may recall

Save you, who are persuasive to unbend

The brows of death, and name him for a friend:

This ecstasy is supernatural;

I have survived to see the heavens fall

Into my hands, which on your hands depend.

 

Time has prepared us an enduring bed

Within the earth of this beloved land; 

And, lying side by side and hand in hand,

We shall lie coeval with the happy dead

Who are ourselves, a little earlier bound

To one another’s bosom in the ground.

JUNE LIGHT by Richard Wilbur, 

Your voice, with clear location of June days,

Called me outside the window.  You were there,

Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare

Of uncontested summer all things raise

Plainly their seeming into seamless air.

 

Then your love looked as simple and entire

As that picked pear you tossed me, and your face

As legible as pearskin’s fleck and trace,

Which promise always wine, by mottled fire

More fatal fleshed than ever human grace.

 

And your gay gift—Oh when I saw it fall

Into my hands, through all that naïve light,

It seemed as blessed with truth and new delight

As must have been the first great gift of all.