Joy's Trick

HAMLEN BROOK

At the alder-darkened brink 

Where the stream slows to a lucid jet 

I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat, 

And see, before I can drink, 

A startled inchling trout 

Of spotted near-transparency, 

Trawling a shadow solider than he. 

He swerves now, darting out 

To where, in a flicked slew 

Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves 

Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves, 

And butts then out of view 

Beneath a sliding glass 

Crazed by the skimming of a brace 

Of burnished dragon-flies across its face, 

In which deep cloudlets pass 

And a white precipice 

Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down 

Toward where the azures of the zenith drown. 

How shall I drink all this? 

Joy’s trick is to supply 

Dry lips with what can cool and slake, 

Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache 

Nothing can satisfy. 

—RICHARD WILBUR