The Writer

In her room at the prow of the houseWhere the light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,My dauughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearingFrom her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keysLike a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuffOf her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,And then she is at it again with a bunched clamorOf strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starlingWhich was trapped in that very room, two years ago;How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creatureBatter against the brilliance, drop like a gloveTo the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,For the wits to try it again; and how our spiritsRose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,Beating a smooth course for the right windowAnd clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wishWhat I wished you before, but harder.

Richard Wilbur, “The Writer” from Collected Poems 1943-2004.