Clearness

by Richard Wilbur

There is a poignancy in all things clear,

In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning.

Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water

We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.

And feel so when the snow for all its softness

Tumbles in adamant forms, turning and turning

Its perfect faces, littering on our sight

The heirs and types of timeless dynasties.

In pine-woods once that huge precision of leaves

Amazed my eyes and closed them down a dream.

I lost to mind the usual southern river,

Mud, mist, the plushy sound of the oar,

And pondering north through lifted veils of gulls,

Through sharpening calls, and blue clearings of steam,

I came and anchored by a fabulous town

Immaculate, high, and never found before.

This was the town of my mind's exacted vision

Where truths fell from the bells like a jackpot of dimes,

And the people's voices, carrying over the water,

Sang in the ear as clear and sweet as birds.

But this was Thule of the mind's worst vanity;

Nor could I tell the burden of those clear chimes;

And the fog fell, and the stainless voices faded;

I had not understood their lovely words.