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The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur

By T.

24 December 2005

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The Beautiful Changes
Richard Wilbur

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of
          you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that
          says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding,
          to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to
          wonder.

MARGINALIA

Visited my grandmother yesterday. Ate a lot of chocolates and watched the TV the whole day, just the kind of thing that one can do at any grandmother’s house all over the world.

When boredom got to me, I went around the house to see what I can do. There I discovered a lot of pictures when I was young, preserved in fames or carefully tucked in photo albums.

How much I have changed since then. I remember Wilbur:

ABOUT RICHARD WILBUR

Richard Wilbur was born in New York City on March 1, 1921. Wilbur’s first book of poems, The Beautiful Changes and Other Poems (Reynal & Hitchcock) was published in 1947. Since then, he has published several books of poems, including Anterooms: New Poems and Translations (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010); Collected Poems, 1943–2004 (Harvest Books, 2004); Mayflies: New Poems and Translations (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000); New and Collected Poems (Harcourt Brace… (more)