Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I am David Kern.

Today is Wednesday, April 22nd, 2020.

The poem that I'm going to read today is by Richard Wilbur.

I've read from him before, maybe a time or two too often, although in my estimation,

you can't read too much Richard Wilbur.

He's probably, I hesitate to say this,

but he's probably my favorite poet. He's certainly up there. He lived from 1921 to 2017.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called The Reader. It comes from his 2004 collection

new poems. It Goes like this.

She's going back these days to the great stories that charmed her younger mind.

A shaded light shines in the nape

half-shadowed by her curls.

And a page turns now with a scuffing sound.

Onward they come again, the orphans reaching for a first-handhold in a stony world, the young provincials who at last look down on the city's maze

and will descend into it. The serious girl, once more, who would live nobly, the sly one who aspires to marry so the young man bent on glory and that other who seeks a burden

knowing as she does what will become of them in a bloody field or tuscan garden it may be that at times she sees their first and final selves at once,

as a god might to whom all time is now,

for having lived so much herself,

perhaps she meets them this time with a wiser eye,

noting that Julian's calculating head is from the first two severed from his heart.

But the true wonder of it is that she,

...