Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson and today is the 1st of March, 2024.

Today's poem is by Richard Wilbur, one of our favorites here at the Daily Poem.

Wilbur was born on this day in 1921.

Happy birthday to Richard Wilbur. The poem I'm going to read today is called

The Death of a Toad. I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it again. Here's

the death of a toad. A toad the power mower caught, chewed and clipped of a leg,

with a hobbling hop has got to the garden verge,

and sanctuaryed him under the cineraria leaves,

in the shade of the ashen, heart-shaped leaves,

in a dim, low, and a final glade.

The rare original heart's blood goes, spends on the earth and hide, in the folds and whizzinings, flows in the gutters of the banked and staring eyes.

He lies as still as if he would return to stone, and soundlessly attending, dies toward some deep monotone,

toward misted and abulient seas and cooling shores, toward lost amphibia's emperies.

Day dwindles, drowning, and at length is gone in the wide and antique eyes, which still appear to watch across the castrate lawn,

the haggard daylight steer.

It has been said about Richard Wilbur's poetry

that it has the unique virtue of being instantly

recognizable as poetry and being approachable, even to the uninitiated, that you don't have to

know much about poetry or be a poetry person to find some handles to grab onto in the poetry of Richard Wilbur.

And yet, it also offers a depth that rewards slow and careful contemplation, repeated reading, and it's rare that

both of those things can be offered in equal measure in a single poem or the work of a single

...