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"A Storm In April"
Some winters, taking leave,
Deal us a last, hard blow,
Salting the ground like Carthage
Before they will go.
But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today — It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.
The light flakes do not weigh
The willows down, but sift
Through the white catkins, loose
As petal-drift
Or in an up-draft lift
And glitter at a height,
Dazzling as summer’s leaf-stir
Chinked with light.
This storm, if I am right,
Will not be wholly over
Till green fields, here and there,
Turn white with clover,
And through chill air the puffs of milkweed hover.
About Richard Wilbur
Richard Purdy Wilbur (1 March 1921 - 14 October 2017) was an American poet and literary translator. He was appointed the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1987, and twice received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1957 and again in 1989.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Additional quotes by Richard Wilbur
the health of the sick, and, what mocked their sighing, Of the strange intactness of the gladly dying.
Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.
What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow’s walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.
Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea.
Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the product's something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.