📃
Daily(ish) poem → 00310 ◊ John Chrysostom ◊ Richard Wilbur
John Chrysostom
He who had gone a beast
Down on his knees and hands
Remembering lust and murder
Felt now a gust of grace,
Lifted his burnished face
From the psalter of the sands
And found his thoughts in order
And cleared his throat at last.
What they heard was a voice
That spoke what they could learn
From any gelded priest,
Yet rang like a great choir,
He having taught hell’s fire
A singing way to burn,
And borrowed of some dumb beast
The wildness to rejoice.
—Richard Wilbur
—found in Things of This World (1956)