5,002: All These Birds

I've just noticed that I have now exceeded 5,000 posts on this blog – Butterflies, Proms, Ibsen was number 5,000. I would never have seen that coming when I tentatively launched this Hedonic Resource on the world back in 2008. Anyway, I reckon it's time for a poem, so here's a gem by Richard Wilbur. In the collection Things of This World (1956), 'All These Birds' comes immediately before 'A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra' (IMHO his finest poem), and there is a similar energy in the way the stanzas flow into each other, building to a great affirmation of the primacy of imagination and of love. All These Birds Agreed that all these birds, hawk or heavenly lark or heard-of nightingale, Perform upon the kitestrings of our sight In a false distance, that the day and night Are full of wingèd words gone rather stale, That nothing is so worn As Philomel’s bosom-thorn, That it is, in fact, the male Nightingale which sings, and that all these creatures wear Invisible armor such as…