A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra

For Dore and Adja

Under the bronze crownToo big for the head of the stone cherub whose feetA serpent has begun to eat,Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

Past spattered mosses, breaksOn the tipped edge of a second shell, and fillsThe massive third below. It spillsIn threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

A scrim or summery tentFor a faun-ménage and their familiar goose.Happy in all that ragged, looseCollapse of water, its effortless descent

And flatteries of spray,The stocky god upholds the shell with ease,Watching, about his shaggy knees,The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

His fauness all the whileLeans forward, slightly, into a clambering meshOf water-lights, her sparkling fleshIn a saecular ecstasy, her blinded smile

Bent on the sand floorOf the trefoil pool, where ripple-shadows comeAnd go in swift reticulum,More addling to the eye than wine, and more

Interminable to thoughtThan pleasure’s calculus. Yet since this allIs pleasure, flash, and waterfall,Must it not be too simple? Are we not

More intricately expressedIn the plain fountains that Maderna setBefore St. Peter’s–the main jetStruggling aloft until it seems at rest

In the act of rising, untilThe very wish of water is reversed,That heaviness borne up to burstIn a clear, high, cavorting head, to fill

With blaze, and then in gauzeDelays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fineIllumined version of itself, decline,And patter on the stones its own applause?

If that is what men areOr should be, if those water-saints displayThe pattern of our areté,What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

Spangled, and plunging house?They are at rest in fulness of desireFor what is given, they do not tireOf the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

And riddled pool below,Reproving our disgust and our ennuiWith humble insatiety.Francis, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

Before the wealthy gateFreezing and praising, might have seen in thisNo trifle, but a shade of bliss–That land of tolerable flowers, that state

As near and far as grassWhere eyes become the sunlight, and the handIs worthy of water: the dreamt landToward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.

Richard Wilbur, “A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra” from Collected Poems1943-2004.