Richard Wilbur



                        Hamlen Brook


                        At the alder-darkened brook
            Where the stream slows to a lucid jet
I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat,
                        And see, before I can drink,

                        A startled inchling trout
            Of spotted near-transparency
Trawling a shadow solider than he.
                        He swerves now, darting out

                        To where, in a flicked slew
            Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves
Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves,
                        And butts then out of view

                        Beneath a sliding glass
            Crazed by the skimming of a brace
Of burnished dragon-flies across its face,
                        In which deep cloudlets pass

                        And a white precipice
            Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down
Toward where the azures of the zenith drown.
                        How shall I drink all this?

                        Joy's trick is to supply
            Dry lips with what can cool and slake,
Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache
                        Nothing can satisfy.


Richard Wilbur, Collected Poems 1943-2004, Harvest Books,
2006.