Poem by Richard Wilbur - Two Voices in a Meadow

I’m good at remembering first lines of poems. (A favorite which returns to me regularly, often seemingly out of nowhere: What I wanted, in the pearly repetitions of February, was vision -- Robert Hass), or a feeling a poem gave me, but rarely anything else beyond a few scattered words or phrases. I’ve even come to see myself as an index of first lines, my life as the inexpressible feelings that come in the absence of what follows, a suggestion, more start than finish. 

But this poem by Richard Wilbur is one that I carry with me in its entirety. In life, I had expected to identify with the milkweed, but in the end it's the stone I know most intimately. Of course I thought about the poem while exploring an actual meadow two days ago.

 Two Voices in a Meadow 

A Milkweed

Anonymous as cherubs

Over the crib of  God,

White seeds are floating

Out of my burst pod.

What power had I

Before I learned to yield?

Shatter me, great wind:

I shall possess the field.

A Stone

As casual as cow-dung

Under the crib of God,

I lie where chance would have me,

Up to the ears in sod.

Why should I move? To move

Befits a light desire.

The sill of Heaven would founder,

Did such as I aspire.

                                - Richard Wilbur

                                  from Advice to a Prophet (1961) 

"For we are all somehow dreadfully cracked" - a paragraph from Melville

An excerpt from "The Ramadan" chapter of Moby-Dick:
 
I love Ishmael very much, find him to be the best companion; of his time, of course, but always open, always willing to accept and even love all humanity. His reaction to his new friend Queequeg's intense Ramadan observances seems particularly relevant in January of 2015. 

I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan; -- but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all -- Presbyterians and Pagans alike -- for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.

                                                                                      -from "The Ramadan"
                                                                                        Moby-Dick, or The Whale
                                                                                        Herman Melville
                                                                                        circa 1851

Now that's a beard.